


The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning

by AmberXBoone



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Castiel is Saved from the Empty (Supernatural), Dean Winchester Deserves Better, Dean Winchester Saves Castiel from the Empty, Episode Fix-It: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, If Supernatural (TV) Were on HBO, M/M, POV Alternating, s15e20 Doesn't Exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:41:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 24,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28522596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmberXBoone/pseuds/AmberXBoone
Summary: .....and Dean tries to accept that this, this life, is just how it was always supposed to be for him, how it would always be—that his father wanted him to pick up where he left off, saving people, hunting things, the family business, something like that, whatever that means anymore. That it’s always been his fate, to die a hunter, to die at the hands of some monster, even at the hands of a monster that turned out to be God himself. But lying alone in the middle of a discarded Earth, he knows this isn’t all there is for him. That he could have been, could be, so much more than Daddy’s blunt instrument.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy & Sam Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Ruby/Sam Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 55





	1. The Truth (Dean)

**Author's Note:**

> How it should have ended. Starts immediately after 15x18. Because Dean would have never left Castiel in the Empty, and Dean deserved better. And so did Sam, and Eileen, and Jack.
> 
> This is written partially in first person but mostly in third. The parts in first person take place after everyone vanishes, and it's only Sam, Dean, Castiel, and Jack, and were written that way to convey that they were alone - the later chapters are in third person. The Narrator/POV is denoted after the chapter title.

Dean Winchester is saved. Again. 

But I never deserved to be saved. Especially not now. Especially not by him. Again.

The smell of his blood on my jacket makes me nauseous as the vibrating of my phone screams in the silence. I drag my hands down my face, my brain pounding. There were so many things I could have said, should have said. Instead, I said nothing.  
I fucked up. Because that’s what I do. It was my idea to come back here, to find Billie. It’s my fault Cas is gone. 

His final words echo over and over in my head. His deal, to sacrifice himself to the Empty, to let it steal him away forever, for Jack, for me. The one thing he wanted was something he thought he could never have. 

I would have let him have whatever, whatever it is he wanted. 

I pull at my hair. I pick up the chair that sits in the middle of the room and throw it into the wall. I scream out to the Empty, ask it to take me too. I stumble into the hallway, retracing the steps we’d taken to his death. My fingers move along the wall, along the scratches embedded from Billie’s scythe. 

Sam is still calling. I can’t answer. I can’t talk to him. Not now. 

I open the door to Cas’ room. The sheets on the bed tucked neatly underneath the mattress. The pile of papers stacked on his desk. All those things he felt, about me, all those things he said, none of it matters because the entire world is going to die. Because of me.

I scatter the papers all over the room. Maybe this is his research; he must have been trying to find a way out of his deal, he couldn’t have accepted this as his fate. Maybe there’s something here I can use to summon the Empty, to bring him back. But there’s nothing but newspaper clippings. Cases. Two bodies found on Long Island missing their hearts. A bunch of cattle mutilations outside of Philadelphia. Seven missing teenagers in Phoenix. 

“Goddamn it, Cas.” I tear the blankets off the bed, throw them onto the concrete floor. I collapse into them, repeating his name over and over. He would still be here, if it weren’t for me. I need to bring him back. I need to find a way.

He pulled me out of Hell, I’ll pull him out of nothingness and despair. If it’s the end of me.

Sam’s stopped calling.

So I drink half a bottle of whiskey, and I’m drunk, but not drunk enough to forget that Cas was in love with me, not drunk enough to forget the sound of the Empty as it stole him away. I fall back onto the table, spreading out across the map of the world painted on it, staring up at the ceiling, dropping the bottle to the floor. I should have said something. But I couldn’t, because I’ve spent years telling myself that what I felt, was something I shouldn’t feel, was something he couldn’t feel. Because I’ve been in denial, maybe.

Somewhere, Chuck is destroying the entire world, and I don’t care. Not anymore. Caring has never gotten me anything, except everyone I’ve ever loved dead.

All the times, he tried to prove himself to me, all the times he tried to fix everything he’d fucked up. All the times I’d thrown him out and all the times I treated him like shit, all the times he’d come right back. 

But I was too fucking stupid to realize.

There are a hundred or a thousand or maybe a million different things I could have said, things I could have done. I could have told him that I’ve been his since the moment he gripped me tight and raised me from perdition, or whatever. That anything he wanted, he could have had. I could have held his body against mine, tried to pull him away from oblivion. I could have tried to fight the Empty and Death all at once.

But I didn’t do anything.

Maybe I could make a deal, with Chuck, let him murder the planet in exchange for bringing Cas back. Maybe there’s some spell, something in the Book of Damned, something, somewhere that will save him. Something, anything.

I struggle to walk across the room, to the books that Sam left strewn in a pile. I sit, still pouring whiskey down my throat, slamming the bottle into the splintered wood. I tear through pages and pages, but there’s nothing, nothing that makes any sense. Nothing about how to save an angel who made some deal with the Empty to save the Devil’s son.

I throw the books onto the ground. I’m dizzy, exhausted, confused. I lean back, my mouth wrapped around the tip of the bottle. I drink until I think I’m almost dead, because maybe I deserve to be. 

I drink until everything goes black. 

“Dean, get up.” Sam pulls me up by the shoulders. “Dean, what the hell?”

“Sammy,” is all I can manage to say in response. 

He tells me something about everyone being gone. Everyone. Not just the people from Apocalypse World. Donna. He drove back here from Minnesota, because he called me maybe a hundred times and I didn’t answer, because he assumed that I was gone, dead, like everyone else. Then he asks, “Where’s Cas?”

I can’t even say it. I can’t even say he’s gone. I don’t give a shit about everyone else right now.

“Dean, where’s Cas?” he asks again, tugging at my jacket, at the bloody handprint on my shoulder.

“We lost, Sammy. We lost.” I put my head back down on the table. “Just give up. It was Chuck all along, not Billie. We lost.”

“What happened? What happened to Cas?” he sits down across from me, moving the whiskey bottle out of my reach. “Cas… he disappeared?”

“No. No it wasn’t like that.” I lift my forehead up enough to be able to speak. “Billie…she was trying to kill me, she wanted me dead. She cornered us. Cas summoned the Empty…. he had a deal with the Empty.”

“What? And he never told us?” Sam says. 

Jack is hovering in the doorway. I can’t tell Sam, but every part of me wishes Jack would just vaporize, just like everyone else, forever. Because Cas’ deal, it was all about saving him. Because without Jack, Mom would still be here. Cas would still be here. Fuck  
Jack, fuck saving him, fuck saving the world. 

“I don’t understand. Cas’ deal was that the Empty would take him, when he was happy. Cas told me he was far from being happy,” he says. 

Of course Jack knew about the deal, of course he didn’t tell us. 

Sam doesn’t respond, not for a long time. He checks his phone three times. He pours a glass of whiskey. “So, what….Cas had a moment of happiness while being chased by Death?” 

I sit up straight against the back of the chair. Maybe I’ve got this all wrong. Maybe everything Cas said, maybe it didn’t mean what I think it meant. He couldn’t have meant all those things he said, not about me. 

“He told me something. Before it took him. It took him….” I can’t find the words. All I can think about is Cas, rotting away in the Empty somewhere. Cas, who didn’t think I’m human disorder incarnate, or something like that. Cas, who only wanted something more, something he thought he couldn’t have.

Sam just says, “I think I understand now.” And I know that he knows everything, that he’s always known. 

“And I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save Cas.” Admitting this, admitting that I’ve failed, again, to Sam, tears through my insides. I’ve lost Cas too many times already, to Purgatory, to Heaven, to let him go now. After all this. “We need to bring him back. Before we find Chuck, before we stop the goddamn apocalypse again, we need to bring him back.”


	2. Sanctified (Castiel)

Everything is awake. The darkness is filled with the screams of thousands, maybe millions, of dead angels and demons and reapers. 

This is nothing like it was, nothing like it’s supposed to be. 

I’m lying in a void, in desolation, and every part of me wants to regret this, this eternal damnation. But I saved him, I saved Dean. 

And I’d finally told him, what I’d felt for so long, what I needed to say, what I think he needed to hear. And now I’m alone, and it’s too loud to sleep. 

I pull myself to my feet, the black air heavy all around me. I’ve been here before, and something is different, and it’s not even the relentless noise. I think something is wrong. I think something is wrong with me. 

Even here, I used to be able to feel my grace. But, now, I’m empty. For so long, my powers have been failing. At first, I had thought it was all because of Chuck. That Chuck was stealing my powers away so I wouldn’t be useful to Sam and Dean, so they’d discard me the way Chuck had always said they would. 

But Chuck never had any control over me. He never had any control over my power.

But I’m being drained anyway. And I don’t know who, or what, is draining me. 

And I tell myself, that I deserve to be here, because saving Dean and saving Jack, was so much more important than me. But here, in the middle of nothing, all of the things I wanted and all the things I couldn’t have, have been taken from me for eternity.  
Once, I led armies. Once, I pulled Dean Winchester’s soul from Hell. But then I fell, a hundred times I fell, and now there’s nothing left of me.

I’m cold and tired, in a way I can only remember being once before. My stomach aches, and I think maybe I’m hungry. I think maybe I’m losing my mind. 

“You’re back,” a voice says.

“Ruby?” 

“I’d like to think you’re here to save me, like you promised you would, but we both know you were just lying about that.” She steps out from the shadows. “What are you, Castiel?”

“Dead.” I drop back onto my knees. Everything is getting louder. I think I have a headache. Something like that.

Ruby stands over me, she twists her fingers in my hair and tilts my face up towards hers. “Dead. Because of Dean Winchester. You and me both I guess, right?” She runs her hand down my cheek, and across my mouth. “Only you said you would get me out of here, and now you’re here, and you aren’t even you. I don’t even think you belong here. I don’t even think you’re an angel.”

“I’m sorry, Ruby.” 

She laughs. “Whatever. This is even better. Once the Empty realizes that some poor, dead almost-human is here, it will throw you back to where you belong. Hell. And I’ll ride you all the way there.”

“I don’t belong in Hell.” But even I don’t believe that. All of the people I’ve hurt, all of the things I’ve done to protect the Winchesters and Jack. I’ve destroyed Heaven. Killed more angels than I can even remember. “What’s happening to me?”

“Too much humanity,” Ruby sits down beside me. “You know, me and Sam had a thing. It was pretty good.”

“The demon blood? Okay. If you say so.” 

“Yeah. That. But I didn’t love Sam.” Her dark hair blends into the abyss that surrounds us. All I can see is her face. “But you. All you needed to do to make yourself happy was to tell Dean Winchester you’re in love with him. Not very angelic, or whatever.” 

She leans against me, closes her eyes. She’s so warm and or the first time ever, I’m terrified. I’m terrified of being here forever, of what the Empty and all the angels and demons will do when everyone finally knows, why I rebelled over and over for Dean. 

Because, from the minute I stole Dean’s soul from Hell, I needed him, wanted him, all of him, in a way I didn’t understand. 

I’m shaking, from cold and from fear, and Ruby puts her hand over mine. Ruby tells me that its close, that it will be here soon, that Jack made it loud and the Empty is doing everything it can, just to sleep again. And it can’t sleep with me, a fading dead angel, stuck here. 

She tells me, she wants back in Hell. She heard there’s a demon uprising and the Queen of Hell is losing all control. She wants to warn Rowena, stop the insurgency, she wants to become Rowena’s second in command. “What are you going to do, if we get out of here?” she asks. 

“I’m never getting out of here.” I let my head drop onto her shoulder. My power, I can feel it get weaker with every second, and I feel myself slipping away. She shakes me awake, she tells me if I fall asleep, it might be forever. “I’m not even good at being an angel, but I was terrible at being human.”

“Me too,” Ruby says. “A long time ago.”

I remember all the guilt, all the regret that comes with being a human. The struggle of falling asleep every night only to wake up and relive the same exact day over and over. Brush your teeth. Show up to work. Pretend to be something other than miserable. 

“You and me, we aren’t that different,” Ruby rests her head on mine. “I used Sam to get what I wanted, you raised Dean from Perdition, or whatever, to try to give Heaven what it wanted, right? The only difference is that you didn’t obey your orders.”

“That’s what everyone tells me.” I close my eyes again, almost drifting off. 

She says my name over and over until I lift my head from her shoulder. She tries to lift me off the ground, her voice becoming more urgent, she pulls me backward, yanking on the collar of my coat. 

The Empty still looks like Meg. And it just laughs, with Meg’s face and Meg’s smile. She laughs and laughs and laughs until it drowns out all the terror, the never-ending screaming. Forever in Hell, would probably be better than this. 

“Castiel?” It says. “That was your moment of happiness? Dean Winchester is selfless, he changed you, you’re in love with him?” It laughs again. “It was so sad, so pathetic, I almost didn’t bother with you.” 

“Not funny,” Ruby says.

“And the best part of it all, is that he didn’t even say it back. You gave up everything, your life, just to tell Dean Winchester that the one thing you want is something he’d never want to give you.” It pulls me closer to it, and it cups my chin with Meg’s hand, it runs Meg’s fingers down my neck and along the buttons on my shirt. “Poor Castiel, no one’s ever wanted you like that. No one’s ever loved you.”

Everything it says, I know it’s right. I know Dean never felt the same way. He’d spent half of the past year blaming me for everything, everything that went wrong. And I never really cared that he didn’t feel the same way, until now, until here. Now there’s a feeling inside me, that hates myself, that wants to know how I could possibly think there was ever a chance he might want me, the way I wanted him. That hates myself for all the nights I watched him as he slept, hates myself for all the things I thought about doing to him in every disgusting, dirty motel room we ever shared. 

“Just end it.” My jaw moves along Meg’s palm as I speak, her hands still holding my face. 

It laughs again, this time even louder. “I’ll never sleep again, all because of your Nephilim. You think I’ll ever let you know peace, after all that you’ve done?” It stops talking, and moves Meg’s hands further down my chest, the buttons on my shirt falling open. It slides Meg’s hand just above my heart. And I pray, pray to the God that I wish didn’t exist, for it to stop. 

But it keeps laughing. “What are you? Not an Angel of the Lord. And you can’t stay here.”

Meg’s hand presses against me, and I’m sure she’s devouring whatever grace is left inside of me. 

And finally, I fall asleep.


	3. The Day the World Went Away (Sam)

In an empty field, somewhere maybe 10 miles outside of Lebanon, Kansas, I watch my brother lose his mind. My brother who raised me, who survived the abuse and torment of our father, for me. My brother, who stole for me, who would give up anything, who would give up his life, for me. 

This is far from the first time he’s lost his mind, but this is different. He’s on his knees, books of lore wide open, in a circle around him. Broken bowls and failed ingredients of seven or eight spells that didn’t work, that didn’t summon the Empty, covering his jeans and the ground in front of him. His hands are bloody, from the shattered glass of a bottle of something, and he leaves red handprints in the grass, that almost match the one that’s still on the shoulder of his jacket. He refused to change before we came here.

The spell, with Jack’s blood, the spell that once resurrected Lucifer from the Empty, the one that was supposed to resurrect Cas, nothing happened, it didn’t do anything. You need the blood of someone connected to the angel, and Jack isn’t Cas’ blood, not really.

Dean calls out, again, for Castiel. When he does, he falls forward, into the books, fingers clasping his skull, and he rocks himself back and forth in the dirt. 

He still won’t tell me exactly what Cas said to him. He doesn’t need to. It’s been obvious to me, for so long. 

The sun is setting, on a now-vacant world, and I use the last rays of dying light to read through Rowena’s spell book again. This keeps my mind off the fact that maybe Eileen is dead, in Hell, or that Chuck sent her to some other dimension, or planet, and that maybe we’ll never see each other ever again.

Dean tells me to try something else. This isn’t working. None of this is working. He presses his head down into the ground, says that we should just give Chuck what he wants. Right here, we should end each other. 

I drop Rowena’s book down by my feet, there’s nothing, nothing about the Empty. Nothing that makes any sense anymore. 

Jack is sitting alone, on the rotted-out bark of a fallen tree, staring up at the blackening sky. He woke Cas up from the Empty once before, I tell him to do it again, but he says he doesn’t know how. He says Cas isn’t asleep. He says the Empty isn’t asleep, because he made it loud. Then he says, “Kill me.”

“What?" 

“Cas had me drain almost all of his grace….and he went there, right? And then I brought him back. So kill me. Well, I guess, almost kill me, if you can, but if you have to just kill me….that would be okay.” Jack looks over at Dean, who is silent now, his bleeding hands covering his face. “It’s my fault Cas is in the Empty. The Empty wanted me. Kill me. It will take me. I’ll bring him back.”

“Not by yourself. One of us has to go with you.” If we let him go alone, there’s no way he won’t be dead forever, there’s no way he can fight the Empty and save Cas, there’s no way the Empty will let him go again.

“The Empty only takes angels and demons.” Jack says. “You and Dean can’t go.”

A million things run through my head. Summoning Lucifer, letting Lucifer take me as his vessel all over again, just so that Dean can kill me, release me into the Empty. Calling Michael, letting him take Dean for all the same reasons, but I won’t risk that again. 

But there was something, in one of these books, in Enochian, something I saw, late one night, something about a way to transfer grace. Something about making a human into an angel. An angel whose grace can be drained, just enough, to cross the veil into the Empty. It was just some Men of Letters crap, something that I know won’t work, but I have nothing else, nothing else to even consider. 

It’s dark and cold, and we’ve been out here for something like nine hours by the time I find the spell, in some book we’d thrown into the truck of the Impala. I won’t tell Dean, but I don’t think there’s any way we can pull this off. This book is full of dark magic, full of spells that only the most powerful witches could even think about doing. Maybe Rowena could have done this, but she’s dead, gone just like everyone else. And now all Dean has is me, and I need to do this, because if I fail, I know I’ll lose him for good this time.

I owe him this, I owe him Cas.

He refuses to let me be the one, to take Jack’s grace, to go to the Empty. He says it has to be him. 

Dean’s anger, with himself, with everything, I know that’s only part of what’s driving him now. There’s things that Dean won’t admit, maybe even to himself, so I agree, to let him do this, because I know he wants this, more than anything.

They could both die; both Dean and Jack, if I fuck this up. And then it would be just me, on an abandoned Earth. Chuck would get bored fast. Then I’d be dead too. And then Chuck could tear down this world and destroy it, and there would be nothing, no world for Eileen, to return to, even if I could bring her back.

I have to do this, I have to do this right, or it’s the end of Dean, the end of the world, the end of me.

Jack kneels down in front of me. He turns his wrist over and lets me cut along the veins, lets his blood pool in the stone bowl below him. Then he lifts his neck, tilts his head backward and lets me run the angel blade along his throat. His grace streams out as I cut his skin, slowly, dripping, floating into the vial that Dean holds between his fingers. I pull the blade away, and he collapses onto the ground. He’s still breathing, but he’s dead enough, for now.

Dean lifts the sleeve of his jacket. “Do it,” he says. 

His blood mixes in with Jack’s, and I pour Jack’s grace into the bowl, reciting a bunch of Enochian words that I don’t understand, and that don’t make any sense. Nothing. Dean lunges forward, pushes himself against me, tells me to try again, until he falls at my feet. He convulses and moans, throws up on my shoes. 

There’s a bright flash of white light, and I can’t see or hear anything, and when it’s over, Dean lays motionless in the dirt. I didn’t do this right, he couldn’t handle it, I murdered my own brother. 

Slowly, he picks himself up from the ground, and in the dim light that streams down from the moon, the shadows of broken angel wings reflect on the trees and in the grass. 

It worked, barely. He’s barely an angel, but maybe it’s enough, it has to be enough, to get him to the Empty, to Cas. 

He stands only a few feet in front of me, arms stretched to his sides, the cuts on his palms healing, the bruises on his face fading. He reaches out and grabs my wrist, and he tells me that, if he can’t do this, if he can’t bring Cas back, he’s never coming back. If he can’t do this, he just wants to rot in the Empty, rot forever with Castiel. “No deals, no resurrection, promise me.” 

I just say, “But I can’t do that,” and I drain his grace, Jack’s grace, the grace I’d just shoved down inside him, until the light in his eyes goes dark.

And the Earth is mine.


	4. Into the Void (Dean)

Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop, a voice shrieks from the darkness. I’m in the middle of nothing, lying on an endless black road to nowhere. 

The way I feel, it’s not like when Michael used me as his vessel, when I felt invincible, perfect. Now, my insides feel like they’re shattered and Jack’s grace burns through my veins, but I’m here, in the Empty, and I need to find Cas. 

I need to find him, get him out of here, before Sam tries to bring me back. Here, I’m the hunted, hunted by the demons and angels I’ve sent to their deaths—Alastair, Azazel, too many to even remember. 

I call out to him. Cas. Cas. Cas. No answer.

The noise, the sounds of torment and torture, 40 years of Hell all over again.

And I drop down to my knees, and I pray, I pray to Cas, and hope he can hear me, hope that angels can hear other angels here, hope that he still wants to answer my prayer. Cas, this is all my fault, there are things about me, that no one knows, that I pretend even I don’t know. There are things I feel, that I never thought he could understand. There are things I wanted, that I never thought he wanted.

And there’s things I’ve done, people I’ve had, people who’ve had me, that I’ve hidden away from everyone, because that’s not how Chuck wrote me. 

The moment he laid a hand on me in Hell, my soul, all of me, it belonged to him. 

And even now, with Jack’s grace inside me, I need him to come back.

The shadows move and, above all the screaming, I hear it. “Dean Winchester?”

“Meg?”

“No. Guess again. How are you here? What did you and your brother do now?” 

“Where’s Cas?”

“Dead, for good this time.” The Empty says. “Or almost dead. I heard your prayer. I have his grace, what was left of it anyway. Wasn’t much.” She smiles, tilts her head to the side, all bleach-blonde hair. “Tell me more about what you want from him. I want all the details.”

“Fuck you. Where is he?”

“With your brother’s demon girlfriend. Turning human, dying slowly and painfully. Like humans do.” It leans forward closer to me. “That’s right, Dean Winchester. You made yourself into this, this dead half angel disaster, or whatever, and Castiel, I don’t even know how much longer I can hold him, because he’s hardly an angel anymore, because he fell over and over again, all for you.”

“Give me Cas back. Give Jack back. I’ll get you God. I’ll bring you God.” I know, it knows, everything I’m saying is a lie. Without Cas, I don’t care about finding Chuck, or saving the world, or anything else. 

“I couldn’t care less about Chuck, or whatever he calls himself. He has no power here. And Jack, you can have Jack, this is his fault anyway. As soon as he got back here, I locked him away in the darkest, deepest place here, with his Dad. You know, I thought he might enjoy the reunion.” It presses itself back against its throne, hovering amid darkness, crosses one leg over the other. “But Jack’s grace…is more powerful than anything, and I want it, to make everything quiet, so that I can finally sleep. But without it, without Jack’s powers, you’ll never defeat Chuck, and your world will end. But you can have your poor mostly dead angel back for whatever time Chuck will give you. But he’ll be nothing, just a weak, pathetic human, like you. Jack too.”

It snaps its fingers and, in the darkness, is Cas, almost lifeless. I can see him breathing, his chest moves slowly, but he’s fighting, each time he exhales. Ruby sits beside him, and she turns her eyes up to me. “I knew you wouldn’t leave him here. You just can’t stop yourself from sacrificing yourself.” 

If I give in, if I give it Jack’s grace, we have nothing. No way to defeat Chuck. No way to bring everyone back. No way to save the world. But I’d have Cas. “I’ll do it….if you give Cas his grace back.”

It shrugs. “I can’t do that. He burned his grace off. There was almost nothing left when he got here.”

There were times, when he tried to tell me that his powers were failing, failing and he didn’t know why. He’d tried to talk to me about it so many times, but I just ignored him. There was the night, the night he’d left me; all the times he’d tried to talk to me when I was too drunk or too angry to listen, all the times I’d woken up from some terror-filled dream, only to see him sitting on the edge of my bed, eyes closed, asking himself why he couldn’t stop the nightmares anymore. 

Ruby stands up, reaches out toward me. “Last time I saw you, you stabbed me. You owe me. Get me out of here.”

And I remember all the demon blood, and the powers Sam had when he was addicted to her. If she could give him that, if he goes dark side again, then maybe we don’t need Jack, we don’t need Cas’ grace, to take out Chuck.

“Take it, all of it.” I tell the Empty. “Take whatever is in me, whatever is left in Jack. Whatever Sam took from me. Just give me Cas, and give me Jack, and give me Ruby.”

It smiles again. “I think we have a deal…if I could get to Earth, without being summoned. How’s that going to work? No one’s left.”

“No one but Sam,” In the darkness, I kneel down next to Cas, pull him up towards me. His eyes open, barely and he opens his mouth, but he can’t seem to get any words out, and he drops his hand into mine. His fingers fall in between mine.

“I’ve got you.” I don’t know if he can hear me, it doesn’t matter.

Deep inside me, I can feel myself being pulled back, back to Earth. This spell, with Jack’s blood, it didn’t work to resurrect Cas—but Sam thought maybe, if he combined his blood with mine, he’d be able to resurrect whatever is left of me. “Sam’s going to bring me back, and when he does, it will bring you to Earth, to let go of me….and then, you can drain whatever grace is in me, in Jack, and I’ll give you the rest.”

“Your brother better hurry up, before I change my mind,” it says. 

I can almost hear Sam, begging, frantic for something to happen, but the next sound is deafening—of the rift between the Earth of the Empty, breaking open. There’s nothing but black, black sludge everywhere, in my eyes, in my mouth, dripping down my throat. It fills my lungs until I can barely breathe, until I open my eyes, back in my body, face down in the wet grass. 

And I can feel the Empty, pulling Jack’s grace from inside me, and I can feel myself, getting weaker, but I reach down, into the rift, and I pull Cas’ almost-dead-almost-human body from it. The black goop spits out Ruby, and it spits out Jack, and it makes its way up Sam’s legs, up his stomach. He’s still holding the glowing vial, with the rest of Jack’s grace, and I tell him to let go, to give the Empty what it wants.

“But without…Jack’s grace…what about Chuck?”

“Just do it, Sam.”

He doesn’t listen, he lets the Shadow crawl up his body, and he fights it, trying to back away from its grip, trying to peel it off him. I reach out, wrap my hand around his ankle, pulling him to the ground. He drops the vial, and its swallowed up into the Empty.   
He’s still fighting, still pulling back and trying to save Jack’s grace. 

But the black fades back into the dirt, and there’s silence, finally. I lay back down on the ground, next to Cas, and, over and over, I ask him to open his eyes, ask him to say something, ask him not to die on me, again. 

Sam is standing over me. “Dean? What’s happening? What did you do? And Ruby?”

Somewhere, down by my feet, I hear her say, “Nice to see you too, Sam.” 

Cas’ hand moves along the ground, and he grips my wrist. “Dean,” he turns his face towards me. His voice is strained, barely audible. 

“How?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know, I don’t know anything. I don’t know what I did.” I roll my head along the Earth. “I’m sorry. I made a deal. The Empty told me Cas was becoming human. It wanted Jack’s grace, to let him go. I agreed. So I think Jack…I think Jack is human too.” 

Sam reaches down onto the ground and pulls me up by my shoulders. “Dean, without Jack, how do we bring everyone back? How do I bring Eileen back? Or this is it, you get Cas back, and I get…nothing?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know.” He looms over me, blocking out the sky. My entire body aches, all of the angel grace gone, everything gone, except the feeling of Sam yanking me forward and Cas’ hand still loosely dangling in mine. “What if Ruby…can help?”

Sam shoves me backward, back into the dirt, pulls at his hair. “We need to take out Chuck, we need to bring everyone back. Eileen. Donna. Charlie. We need them all back. And we aren’t going to do that with demon blood, we aren’t going to do this, we’re all dead. He’s going to kill us, all of us.” 

“I had to, Sam.”

“Yeah, okay, Dean.” Sam backs away from me, his fists clench. I tell him, to go ahead, hit me, I deserve it. 

But Jack sits up, bloody and bruised and graceless, and says, “We’re all fucked.”


	5. Disarm (Castiel/Dean)

Castiel can’t remember the first time he fell, or when his powers started failing, or when he realized how he felt about Dean. But it never mattered, because he always knew how it would end for him—eternal sleep in the Empty, eternal sleep to save Dean Winchester.

He should have realized, though, that Dean would never leave him there, that Dean would save him. And lying in his bed, listening to Sam and Dean fight for maybe the fifteenth time since they’d gotten back to the Bunker, Castiel wishes that Dean would have just given up on him. 

There was no chance now, without Jack’s powers, that they could bring down Chuck. It was only a matter of time until they were all dead, again.

The pills that Sam had given him to help the throbbing in his head aren’t helping. He still feels weak, hurt, human. He remembers the last time he’d been human, when he’d been preyed upon, homeless, tortured. When he’d been hungry and lost and used. This was different, and this was all his fault. 

Dean has barely said anything to him, even after Castiel had finally regained some kind of consciousness in the back of the Impala on the way to the Bunker. His last words to Dean, his confession, he was only able to get the words out he’d been trying to say for maybe a decade because he thought it was good-bye, forever. 

And now he’s half asleep, lying in a bed that he’d never actually slept in, waiting for Dean to tell him to leave, waiting for Dean to tell him that he could never feel the same way. Waiting for him to tell him he was horrified, disgusted, or something like that. 

He closes his eyes. He tries to sleep. But things he could never feel as an angel, the aches and pains and anxiety, won’t let him. 

Someone knocks on the door, and Castiel just says “Come in.” He’s sure it’s Jack, Jack coming to talk about being newly human, newly graceless, newly useless.

Dean opens the door, holding a beer, the white t-shirt underneath his flannel shirt still stained with dirt and blood. This is it, Castiel assumes, the minute he finally has to face everything, the minute Dean tells him that he only loves him as a brother, a friend, confirms what he’s thought all along.

But Dean doesn’t say a word, he just sits down next to Castiel’s bed, his back pressed against the side of the bedframe. He takes a sip of beer and lays his head backward, onto the mattress, his hair rubbing against Castiel’s arm. The feeling of Dean, touching him, is different now. Castiel can’t feel, or see, Dean’s soul in the way he could he was an angel, but he can still tell Dean is terrified. 

Castiel slides further from him, and Dean arches his neck back to look at him, just enough so that Castiel can see the dark circles under his eyes, the way his cheeks are drained and sallow. He parts his lips, and starts to say something, but drinks his beer instead. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and slides his palm behind his head, and his fingers rest maybe an inch away from Castiel’s. 

Everything Castiel feels right now, the way he can barely breathe, the way he watches Dean’s chest move up and down, the confusion about what to do next, is human. He could leave right now, he’d have the entire world to himself, until Chuck finds him. He could take Dean’s hand into his, pull him up onto the bed, maybe ask to do things to him that he’d never even thought about doing to anyone.

“What made you think that was okay?” Dean asks. “What made you think, it was okay for you to make some fucking deal, and then say those things to me, and then just abandon me? Fuck you, Cas.”

“I saved you.” Castiel sits up, hair disheveled, the collar of the wrinkled t-shirt that Sam let him borrow falling forward. 

“You left me. You told me something, something no one has ever told me, and then you left me, just like everyone else.” Dean lifts his head and slams it back down onto the mattress. “You told me that I’m not a killer, and then you let me watch you die so that I could live. So, again, fuck you, Cas.”

Dean barely even knows what he’s saying anymore, and he looks back at Castiel, weak and empty, who asks only, “Why did you save me?”

Dean doesn’t answer, he just stares, his green eyes bloodshot. Inside, he’s furious, that Castiel can’t figure out the answers to his own questions, that he doesn’t know, that he hasn’t known all along. He’s furious that Castiel, the angel who gripped him tight and raised him from Perdition, fell, lost his grace, became human, all for someone like him. He’s furious that he doesn’t know what to say to Castiel, or how to say it, or whether he should say it at all. He wasn’t worth this. “What did you even mean?” he asks Castiel. “Your deal….you said you didn’t know what would make you happy. You said the one thing you want, is something you know you can never have? What the hell were you talking about?”

Castiel knows that, maybe this is it, when Dean finally breaks him forever. He tries to come up with something, that doesn’t sound stupid, or ridiculous, but he isn’t good at this, and he decides it doesn’t matter anymore, that nothing matters, because Chuck is going to slaughter all of them. He leans forward, over Dean, and presses his lips against Dean’s. He waits for Dean to push him away, but instead Dean’s tongue is in his mouth, and his face is buried in Dean’s neck, and Dean’s fingers are tangled in his hair.

Castiel struggles to control his body, a human body he doesn’t fully understand, a body that’s trembling and sweating and desperate. He pulls away from Dean, afraid he’s gone too far already, but Dean turns and brings himself onto the edge of the bed. 

“Sorry, Dean,” Castiel says.

Dean lies down, stretching his arm across Castiel’s legs. He still feels wounded, torn up inside, from the angel spell, from being drained of Jack’s grace, and he’s almost scared, about how much he wants this. “I ruined you, like I ruin everything.” Dean tugs on the material of Castiel’s shirt and drags Castiel down onto the pillow beside him. 

“I ruined myself,” Castiel turns his eyes down, and starts to roll onto his back, but Dean stops him, presses his forehead into Castiel’s. 

Castiel can feel Dean exhale into his mouth, and the way their legs have somehow become entwined. “Are you doing this because you think you have to?”

“No,” Dean says. 

“Then why?”

“Free will, maybe.” Dean mumbles, into Castiel’s chin. Dean kisses him again, running his hands up Castiel’s back, underneath his shirt. Castiel tries to hesitate, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, not really, but he gives in anyway, lets Dean press his hips tightly into his own, lets Dean slide on top of him. He can still taste the beer in Dean’s mouth, and the fading scent of death that had permeated the Empty lingers on both their bodies. 

Dean’s tongue moves down Castiel’s throat, and he stretches the cotton of Castiel’s t-shirt across his shoulder, revealing the red blisters that Castiel hasn’t told him about, that Castiel intended to hide until they healed, or until he was dead. Dean sits up, legs spread over Castiel’s stomach, and tugs the shirt over his head, drops it to the floor. 

Dean presses his hand into Castiel’s shoulder, into the outline of his own handprint that’s seared into Castiel’s skin. 

His eyes are locked on Castiel’s, and his fingertips move along the scar. 

“I guess…when you pulled me from the Empty….” Castiel says. “Because you were an angel, somehow, and I’m human…” He slides his body up enough to grab onto the collar of Dean’s shirt, tugging on it, until Dean’s chest is touching his again. “I’m sorry, Cas,” Dean says, and Castiel doesn’t really know what Dean’s apologizing for, but he can’t respond, because Dean’s mouth is on his, and Dean’s fingers are running down his sides, right to the top of Castiel’s pants.

So many nights, Castiel had sat alone in the Bunker, while everyone slept, imagining what it would be like to have Dean’s body against his like this, for Dean to be his, all his, in every way possible, in ways an angel couldn’t really understand, but in ways that Castiel knew he wanted to feel. But Castiel never thought he would feel so powerless, so overwhelmed, so willing to just give in to whatever Dean wanted.

Dean has never told anyone, but he’s done this before. There was some guy in a bar in Sioux Falls, whose face and name he can’t remember anymore. There was the time with Lee, when his father had found them, passed out, naked and drunk, on the floor of a hotel room. He’d invented some girl, said she’d spent the night with both of them and then left when her boyfriend called, but Dean knew his father never really believed his story. Then there were seven times with Benny, after Dean had rescued him from Purgatory, and every time ended with Dean face down on filthy motel room bedsheets, covered in his own blood after letting Benny nearly suck him dry. 

But this is different, Castiel is different. 

Castiel’s fingers fumble around Dean’s neck and across his face. He still doubts that Dean wants him, wants a broken shell of a once-angel, but Dean’s mouth is relentless, and Castiel wraps his hands around Dean’s wrists. 

Dean’s slides himself down, until his head is buried in Castiel’s abdomen and he looks up at him. “What do you want, Cas?”

Castiel doesn’t know how to answer, because all he can think about is how it would be, to finally have Dean, with nothing in between them, to have Dean in the middle of this empty world, to have Dean in a way that was never in one of Chuck’s stories, to have Dean out of Dean’s own free will. 

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Dean says, because he knows how to fuck, and how to be fucked, because maybe that’s all he’s ever been to anyone. 

Castiel pulls Dean’s face up to his own. “I just want you.”

Dean lets himself collapse on the pillow next to Castiel. He closes his eyes, and lets his lips move against Castiel’s ear. “I love you, Castiel.”


	6. Insidious (Sam)

“Seriously, he’s the president?” Ruby is sitting in front of Dean’s laptop, clicking through some news website that hasn’t been updated in days, because there’s no news when everyone is gone. “A global pandemic? I haven’t seen one of those in like a hundred years. What’s going on here? Maybe I should just have you throw me back in the Empty. Maybe this wasn’t a good time to be back on Earth.”

“It can be arranged.” I’ve been reading the same spell book over and over, and I don’t know why, because there’s no spell to kill God. We had everything we needed, we had Jack, and now we have nothing. Because Dean decided it would be okay to sacrifice everything. He spent an hour tonight, telling me over and over that I would have done the same, for Eileen, and I spent an hour telling him that he was wrong, even though I know he’s not.

And now I’m sitting here, going through these books trying to find a way to fix this, and Dean has disappeared, and I’m trying to ignore the fact that I can smell Ruby’s blood, I can remember the taste of it in my mouth and throat, and I want it all over again.  
And I don’t know what’s happening to me. 

I ask her, what she wants, and she says something about going back to Hell, helping Rowena control some demon uprising. I tell her that Rowena doesn’t need her help, that Rowena can handle it herself. Ruby says I don’t know what I’m talking about. “You know, I was an okay witch once myself.”

“You’re no Rowena,” I say, slamming one book closed and picking up another. 

“I’m not. Are you?” she asks.  
“What?”

“You made Dean into an angel, you sent him to the Empty, and you brought him back. And you think, what, that was just luck? You think anyone could have done that?” She puts her feet up on the table, tapping the heel of her boot against the wood. “You’ve changed, Sam.”

“Thanks, I guess.” I remember how once, I trusted her. I thought she wanted to help me, help me save Dean. Everything about her, and everything she ever said was a lie. So I don’t know why I believe her now.

She pulls her dark hair behind her and leans back in her chair. “Where’d Dean go?” she asks. 

“I don’t know. I don’t care right now.”

“Still fighting with him all the time? But still doing this with him? Why?” 

“Because it’s all we know how to do.” My eyes focus on the pages, but I’m not reading a word. I can hear her blood pumping through her body. I can almost feel the way it was, to be with her, to cut into her skin, to drink from her. The power she gave me, it was incomparable to anything else I’ve ever felt.

And maybe Dean is right, maybe he was right to save Ruby, right to let me lose myself again even if it was just so he could bring Cas back. At my worst, I could exorcise demons, save their victims. At my best, I killed Alastair, Grand Torturer of Hell. Maybe with enough, now, I could take on Chuck. 

I could bring back Eileen, bring back everyone. 

I bend forward across the table, until I’m nearly lying down on it, and I tell her, “I need it. It’s the only chance we have now.” 

And I need it for myself, because the craving is back, and I don’t know why. 

“I don’t think it’s going to help you against, you know, Chuck, or whatever he calls himself.” Ruby closes the laptop and rests her elbow on it. 

“What choice do I have? Jack’s human. There’s no other way.” I reach forward and pull at the sleeve of her jacket. She doesn’t need to know, but I’ve wanted this for months now. Ever since Chuck raised the dead, ever since Belphegor took over Jack’s corpse, and I realized that wanted to drain every drop of demon blood from his body. 

And then came the dreams, the ones Chuck said were just his visions of another Sam and Dean Winchester, in some other universe. The dreams that didn’t stop even my connection with Chuck was broken. The dreams that reminded me of the nightmares I had about Jess, long before I found her burning alive.

Once, Chuck cured me of the demon blood addiction, and of all the yellow-eyed-demon-child abilities. But now, I think he’s letting me relapse. 

“And then when Dean finds out, are you going to let him kill me again?” she asks.

“This was Dean’s idea, wasn’t it?” I step back from the table. “This is Dean’s fault, isn’t it? For giving away what wasn’t his to give away.”

“You’ll help me get back to Hell?” she stands up, folding her arms across her body. 

“Yes.” 

She smiles. “You can have it.” 

Down the hall, Dean’s door is open and his room is dark. For just a second, I worry, that he left, that maybe he’s somewhere, alone and drunk and reckless. Maybe I should call, or text him, but instead I close my bedroom door behind Ruby and find one of the knives I keep in my nightstand drawer. 

She drops her jacket to the floor and lies down on my bed. Eileen wouldn’t want this, I shouldn’t be doing this, but it’s the only way to get her back. 

I cut into Ruby’s arm and press my mouth against her, sucking the blood out of her veins. She still tastes as good as when we used to do this, years ago, and she runs her hands up my back and through my hair. Only part of me wants to stop.

She lifts up the bottom of her shirt, just enough to reveal the lower part of her stomach. She looks down at me, and she says, “It’s okay, Sam.”

She’s told me that before. Before I helped her start the Apocalypse. 

I cut across her flesh, and let her bleed, past my lips and teeth and down my tongue. My face is buried against her and she groans and squirms against me. 

I’m losing myself, every day I can feel it, and right now I feel it more than ever. 

I lift my body off hers and wipe the blood dripping down my chin with the back of my hand. Her hair is scattered across my pillow, and her legs are wrapped around me. I close my eyes, think of Eileen, somewhere, in some other world, but I can feel my control slipping away. I haven’t felt like this in so long, and the feeling of finally letting go after everything, after saving everyone and everything, so many damn times, this is what I deserve. 

So I undo the button on her jeans with the tip of my knife, pull the zipper down slowly. She says something about thinking about me, while she was in the Empty, something about how she missed this.

I can’t let myself do this.

I drag myself off her body, every part of me fighting my decision.

“Fuck, Sam don’t stop,” she says. “No one will ever know. No one but you and me.”

“I just – I can’t.”

I escape her, escape to the bathroom. I wash the blood off my face. It’s in my hair and on the collar of my shirt. The reflection in the mirror reminds me of another version of myself, a version I thought could never come back. 

I slide down the wall, and onto the floor. This has been in me all along. And the only reason I ever thought that maybe, someday, I could just be normal is because Chuck tricked me into thinking I was someone else, somebody who isn’t a freak.

I tell myself that I’m doing this for Eileen. For Donna and Jodi and Charlie and Claire and Bobby, and everyone else. That it’s all fine, because – in the end - I’ll be the one who saves this world from God. And maybe then we’ll all be free, finally. 

I tell myself that Ruby is right, that this is all okay.

And then I go back for more.


	7. Battle Born (Dean/Sam)

On a deserted planet, Dean Winchester lays in the middle of the road that runs in front of the Bunker and drops an empty whiskey bottle into the dirt beside him. A few days ago, before Chuck vaporized every other living thing, an occasional pick-up truck or eighteen-wheeler would drive by. But now there’s no one, no squeaking brakes, no new tire tread marks on the worn pavement, nothing. He could do anything, really. Get in the Impala, see how long, how fast, he could go before he finally lost control. Drive into Town, take whatever he wanted from wherever. 

But instead, he stares up into the late afternoon Kansas sun, wondering how long it will be until he’s dead. How long it will be until Sam is dead, Cas is dead, even Jack. He wonders which one of them will be first, which one of them will be last.  


Dean always assumed he’d die young, in some stupid way, on some stupid hunt. His father even told him, once, that would probably be the best thing that could happen to him. So he didn’t have to die old, alone, forgotten. Like hunters always do. He never even expected to make it past 40. And now he’s going to die because God had decided he’s bored, done with the world, done with Dean.

And, maybe, Dean would have been fine with that, months, weeks, ago. To finally have a way out of this life, this life where he was nothing but a killer, no different than all of the monsters and demons he butchered. But he’s tired, of giving everything to everyone, of always being the one to save the world. To be the one who raised Sam when his own father abandoned them night after night. To be the one who sacrifices everything, every time, for everyone else. So everyone else can be safe, happy, something like that. 

And he knows Sam is furious with him because he gave up Jack’s grace, gave up their chances of beating Chuck and getting Eileen back, to save Cas. But, really, Dean doesn’t care, because for once, he let himself have what he wanted, what he needed, without surrendering it for the greater good.

He closes his eyes, and tries to imagine what it would be like, to be free from this forever. To have some boring job. To live somewhere besides an underground bunker. To be free of the constant dreams of the apocalypse and Hell. But he knows that he probably won’t even survive the next few days and, all of this, is just bullshit Dean Winchester will never have, never deserve.

He’s avoided everyone, especially Cas, all day. Last night, every part of him wanted more, wanted everything, but instead, he let Cas fall asleep human for the first time in years, against him. Dean had talked him through the nightmares, the ones that Cas could never have as an angel, but that seemed to rush into Cas’ brain all at once somewhere around 3 am. 

Dean is sure that Cas really didn’t believe him, when Dean had finally been able to reciprocate, confess, tell him what he probably should have told him years ago. And Dean doesn’t know if what Cas feels is the same, because he doesn’t know if angels—even newly former angels—could ever feel this sense of emptiness, longing, for something, someone.

And Dean tries to accept that this, this is his destiny, his end. That he was born to be a brother, and a mother, and a father, to Sam. That he was born as a means to an end for everyone he’d ever known, anyone he’d ever loved. Except for Cas. He tries to accept that he was nothing but a burned-out vessel for Michael, a constant pawn in what feels like a thousand failed apocalypses. And part of him wishes that Chuck would just destroy everything already, stop dragging this out. And part of him knows that he can’t give up, can’t let this happen.

And Dean tries to accept that this, this life, is just how it was always supposed to be for him, how it would always be—that his father wanted him to pick up where he left off, saving people, hunting things, the family business, something like that, whatever that means anymore. That it’s always been his fate, to die a hunter, to die at the hands of some monster, even at the hands of a monster that turned out to be God himself. But lying alone, in the middle of a discarded Earth, he knows this isn’t all there is for him. That he could have been, could be, so much more than Daddy’s blunt instrument. 

Sam has been looking for Dean for something like an hour when he finally finds him there. The air is abnormally cold, and Sam watches his breath dissipate in the air as he sits down in the grass beside Dean. He doesn’t ask why he’s laying here, in the road, because it doesn’t matter, he only says, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” Dean opens his eyes and turns to Sam. There’s gravel and dirt in Dean’s hair, and Sam wonders just how much he’s had to drink in the past 24 hours, but the demon blood flowing through Sam reminds him that it’s not something he wants to bring up right now.

“I don’t know. Do you want to talk about Cas?” Sam pulls blades of grass out of the ground and throws them down on the street. “About the fact that he’s human….?”

Dean pulls himself up, so that he’s directly across from Sam. “I came out here…to get out of there…to clear my head or whatever. I don’t want to talk about this. We’re all going to be dead soon anyway.”

Sam looks down the desolate road, remembers all the times, in the middle of the night in some shared hotel room, that Dean would call out to Castiel in his sleep, in his dreams. He remembers all the times he wanted to ask Dean how he really felt about Cas, all the times he had assumed that Dean and Cas had already spent countless nights together. And he says, “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. But I know anyway.”

Dean puts his head down into his hands and swallows down the saliva in his mouth. “I don’t want to do this anymore, Sammy. But even if we could win, I have to, because the world is never going to be safe.” He pauses, but the deafening sound of the silence of an empty world rings in his head, and he continues, “Do you remember once, I said, if I knew the world was safe, I’d retire? That’s what I want, and what I’ll never have. Because even if we kill Chuck, they’ll be someone new to take his place, some new end of the world. Some new reason for us to fight.”

Sam is almost relieved, as he says, “If we win, somehow…if we survive….and if we bring everyone back, if we bring Eileen back, I’m out. For good. I’m done. Let someone else fight the vampires and the ghouls. Because I know that, if I don’t get out now, I never will, and I’m not dying for this. And you shouldn’t either.”

“I don’t know how to do anything else.” Dean wipes the dirt from the sleeves of his jacket. “As long as I know there’s monsters, demons, whatever, out there, I can’t stop.”

“Then you’ll have Cas. And Jack. And Bobby. They’ll help you. But I’m out.” Sam digs his fingers into the Earth. 

“So that’s it? You’d just abandon me…Cas, and Jack too?” 

“No, Dean. It’s not like that. I just can’t do this anymore. I’m tired. And you can’t do this either. Because, if I let you, eventually…it’s going to kill you.”

“So then what do we do, Sam? How do we end this?” Dean stands up, and the gravel and grass that had been stuck on his jeans scatters on the ground, reflecting the dimming sunlight.

Sam looks up, Ruby’s demon blood burning through every part of his body, lightheaded and still aching for more, and says, “We do what you, me, and Cas have always done. We fight. We fight God. And we win.”


	8. Absolution (Castiel/Dean)

Everything feels different, as a human. Even the water that runs down Castiel’s face, into his mouth, tastes and smells new. He used to be able to feel every droplet move across his skin. Now, all he feels is lukewarm water, streaming out of a rusty shower head.

He can’t remember if this is how it was the last time he was human, but all he knows is that, this time the loss of his grace seems permanent, like his body couldn’t even hold it if he wanted it to. 

Castiel presses his head against the tiled wall of the shower. He’s been in here maybe an hour, maybe longer. He’s hiding, from Sam, from Jack, but mostly from Dean. He hasn’t seen Dean since he’d left his bed early this morning. Castiel knows whatever happened last night was probably a mistake, and that whatever Dean said, he probably didn’t mean it, or at least didn’t mean it in the way Castiel wanted.

Soap bubbles trickle down his body and pool together before drifting down the drain, washing away the Empty, washing away anything that was divine, celestial. Castiel can still remember the depths of Hell, remember pulling Dean’s tortured, broken soul back to Earth, and now Dean had saved him, scarred him, stripped him of his grace without even realizing.

And the things Castiel used to think about sometimes, the things that angels were never supposed to think about, are now things he can’t stop thinking about, that he wants, that he needs more than anything. 

The bathroom door creaks open and Castiel can barely hear Dean’s voice over the shower running, “Cas, you’ve been in here all night. You good?”

“I’m fine,” Castiel says, from behind the shower curtain. “Fine.”

“Yeah, that’s good, okay,” Dean says, not really knowing if he should have asked, not really knowing if he should be in here. 

Dean starts to close the door, but Castiel calls him back, without thinking about why. Dean locks the door behind him. He stands there, listening to the sound of the rushing water, staring at his reflection in the mirror, at the reddish-blue circles underneath his eyes, at a reflection that’s worn, exhausted, done.

Castiel shuts his eyes and says, “I should leave. I’m useless like this. Chuck always told me I wasn’t supposed to be part of the story.”

“You aren’t leaving,” Dean responds. 

“What did you tell me that time? That…I’m always the something that goes wrong?” Castiel puts his head down, letting the water pour across him. “I’m afraid it will be worse, like this. You should have left me in the Empty. That’s where my story was supposed to end.”

“Fuck that,” Dean says. He slides open the curtain, just a little, enough for him to climb into the shower, drops of water bouncing off his t-shirt and jeans. Castiel doesn’t move or look up, doesn’t react, because he doesn’t know how, because he doesn’t want to. He lets Dean pull his body against his own, and he tries to think of something to say, but he can’t think at all. 

“Do you want this?” Dean asks. “Because…I don’t know…if you…”

“Yes,” is all Castiel says, interrupting him, staring down at the water swirling around by his feet, watching the way Dean’s jeans drag along the bottom of the tub, the water climbing up the darkening denim. 

Dean twists his fingers in Castiel’s hair, pulling Castiel’s head down onto his shoulder. He moves his hand up Castiel’s throat, wrapping his other hand around it. Dean turns his face into Castiel’s, running his tongue along his jaw, down his neck, tugging harder on his hair. Dean’s fingers trail along Castiel’s chin. He leans further back into Dean, sliding down him just enough to let Dean press his lips into his. Dean’s hand drops from Castiel’s hair, down his back, between his legs. 

Being powerless, feeling like Dean has control over every inch of him, is new to him, and it’s like nothing he’s ever felt, ever, in hundreds of millions of years. 

He turns himself so that he’s facing Dean, and pulls him into the running water, soaking him, drenching his clothes. He pulls Dean’s t-shirt halfway up his stomach as he presses him into the wall, shoves his tongue past Dean’s lips. He holds Dean against the cracked bathroom tiles, shoves his body up against Dean’s. Dean’s jeans, saturated with water, chafe against his bare skin.

Dean grips Castiel’s shoulders, backs Castiel’s body away from his. Castiel’s throat tightens—he can’t stop now, not like this. He watches the way the water drips down Dean’s face, from his hair, down his cheeks, into his mouth, and he moves forward to kiss him again, but Dean stops him, putting his hand over his lips. “Not here,” he says, turning off the faucet. 

“I’ll stop, we can stop,” Castiel says. “I’ll go.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dean climbs out of the shower, passing a towel to Castiel. “I just meant…not here.”

Castiel nods, wraps the towel around his stomach. Dean’s clothes create puddles on the floor as he opens the door. Down the hall, Sam’s door is closed, and he knows Ruby is in there, and he knows he should care, knows he should try to stop whatever is going on. But he looks back at Castiel, wrecked and human, and he wants this, and he’s tired of protecting Sam. 

At the edge of his bed, Dean kneels in front of Castiel. Like he’s praying, confessing. 

Castiel lets the towel fall off him. Inside, he still feels broken, worthless, empty, and he needs Dean right now, more than anything, and he’s never felt so close to losing his mind forever. 

Dean looks up at him, water from his hair drizzles onto Castiel’s legs, and says, “Cas, are you sure?”

Castiel reaches down, to the back of Dean’s head, and pushes him against his body. Dean swallows him whole, until Castiel can feel himself in the back of Dean’s throat, can feel Dean’s tongue all around him. He presses Dean closer to him, and Dean’s hands run up the back of his legs. He pulls at the back of Dean’s still-damp shirt, knotting the cotton around his fingertips.

This feeling, the feeling that every part of him is going to implode, this feeling that every part of him is giving in to Dean, is human, staggering, and Castiel doesn’t know if he can handle it for another second.

Dean’s lips narrow tightly on Castiel, and Castiel can’t stop himself any longer. He groans, and he feels shattered, euphoric, all at once as Dean tilts his head back, swallows. Castiel falls onto the bed, struggling to regain his sanity. 

Dean stands, and Castiel pulls at his jeans, unbuttoning them, letting them drop to the floor. His eyes turn up to Dean and he runs his tongue over Dean’s stomach, trailing down to his pelvis. Dean drops his wet shirt on the ground and bends, knocking Castiel backward, and sliding his body down onto his. The feeling of Dean, all of Dean, Dean’s skin against his own, it’s almost like Castiel can feel Dean’s soul again.

And Castiel gives in, until his face is buried in Dean’s pillow, until Dean’s lips and fingers are everywhere, until Castiel finally has Dean, in every way, until Castiel finally has everything, anything, he’s ever wanted.


	9. Revelation 22:20 (Ruby)

If I let him, Sam would bleed me dry. He bites down on my wrists, my neck, anywhere he thinks he can get more. He digs the blade of his knife into my thigh, his head in between my legs as he takes and takes and takes. I tug on his hair, try to bring his tongue up to where I want him, right to where I’ve had him so many times before, but he says he can’t, not right now.

So I lie on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the sound of his mouth against my flesh, the sound of a bedroom door slamming shut somewhere down the hall, the memories of the sounds of the Empty, the screaming, that’s been echoing in my head all day long.

I can never go back there, that place, where I slept for so long, where I dreamed of nothing but every regret I’ve ever had, every mistake I’ve ever made. Most of the time, I dreamed of him, of what I’d turned him into, of manipulating him into causing the Apocalypse, causing Lucifer to rise. Until Jack, or whatever his name is, woke everything up, made it loud, and every dead angel and every dead demon was wide awake, wide awake to relive their greatest miseries. 

But now, I’m here, underneath Sam Winchester, again, apparently trying to help him kill God. 

I can feel myself getting faint, and I push him away, slide to the other side of the bed, and he just lays there, covered in blood, his chin, his neck, his chest. He moves his head backward and blood trickles up his upper lip and onto his nose. 

This isn’t what I wanted, all I wanted was to get the fuck out of the Empty, go back to Hell. I don’t care about God, or Chuck, or whatever I’m supposed to call him. I don’t care about this world, I don’t really care about anything, except maybe I care, more than I want to, more than I should, about Sam. 

“How do you feel?” I turn my face into his pillow. 

“Like maybe I’m almost ready,” he says. “This is different than last time. It took so long for me just to be able to pull demons, but now…I think, soon…”

“You need practice,” I reach down and run my fingers along his, but he pulls his hand away from mine. “And I’m the only demon here.”

He looks up at me, blood still smeared all over his face, “But I need you, for this, I can’t exorcise you.”

“I know. I’m not saying I’m going to let you kill me all the way,” I lean forward on the bed, until my mouth almost touches his. “But I’d let you take me right to the edge……and then bring me back.”

“Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?” he asks. “Are you working with Chuck? What’s in this for you?”

“Fuck Chuck,” I say. “Did you ever think maybe I want to help?”

“Like last time?” His lips graze my face as he speaks. “Like when you used me?”

“Get over it, Sam, it was a long time ago.” I tell him, backing away from his body. “Anyway, it’s not like I was ever a big fan of God.”

“I just want this to be over,” he sits up on the bed and grabs my shoulders, pressing my back up against the headboard. And I don’t think I’m strong enough to fight back anymore, to overpower him, and I barely want to.

“You just want it to be over, so…what? Maybe your girlfriend, or whatever she is, comes back? And then what? You pretend everything is fine? Sam, you know this isn’t just the demon blood, right? There’s something else going on with you, isn’t there?” His fingers dig into my skin while I speak, and he lifts me away from the headboard and slams me back into it.

“Maybe,” he says, wrapping his hand around my throat, until my breath can barely escape my lungs, and he raises his other hand to my mouth. I can feel him, slowly pulling the life out of me, black smoke filling the air in between us. I can feel myself fading, leaving my body. I can’t speak, and he raises his hand higher, above my head, and I can’t see him through the thick haze that floats quietly out of my mouth. 

Reaching out toward him, I pull his hair and drag his face forward into mine, silently begging him to stop. 

He lowers his hand, and the smoke drifts back inside of me. My body is pressed tightly against his, and I can feel something inside him, something powerful, something different, something that isn’t just demon blood and psychic powers. He puts his hands in my hair and brings my face close to his. “Sam, what’s happening to you?” I whisper, into his mouth.

“I don’t know. It was so easy, for me, I could have ended you in a second.” He laughs, and then he kisses me, and I can still taste my blood on his teeth. I wrap my legs around him and he drags my body underneath his. And, I know I should stop him, I know that, he doesn’t really want this, that he doesn’t really want me, but, I give in, because I want this, and I want him, and because I’ve never ever been able to get him out of my head.

Because, when he’s fucking me, I can’t hear the Empty, and I can’t hear the cries of a million dead angels and demons, and I can’t remember the never-ending nightmares. I can’t remember anything. 

He tells me, no one can know, about this, about us, about what we’re doing. That we’re doing it to destroy God. Save the universe. And then his eyes go black.


	10. Hell to Pay (Jack)

The prize is missing from the cereal box. Again. 

I shove the spoon into my mouth, so that the crunching sound drowns out the noises coming from Sam and Dean’s bedrooms. In the morning, I’ll pretend that I have no idea what happened here tonight. That I know nothing about Sam and the demon we dragged back from the Empty. That I’m oblivious to whatever is going on between Dean and Cas, even though it was all obvious to me for so long. 

Alone at the kitchen table, being human, fully human, doesn’t seem so bad. At least I’m not coughing up blood and dying, like when this happened once before. At least not yet. 

And I wonder, in between bites of cookie-shaped high fructose corn syrup, how things could be, if we lived through this, through Chuck, and I could just be normal, like this, for the rest of my life. Not a Nephilim, not Lucifer’s son, not a half-cosmic being. Not someone who can be used, by everyone, for everything. I’ve been used since before I was even born. 

And now I’ve been used up, used up by Dean, all to save Cas. And there’s nothing I can do to stop Chuck, to bring back the world. But I’d rather have Cas back, out of the Empty, even if that means that this is the end. 

A few days ago, I was ready to die. For Cas, for Sam, for Dean. For the world. But now the world is gone, and now I’m nothing, and I’m not ready to give in to Chuck. 

But I was all we had. I was supposed to save them all. And now I’m sitting here, in the dark, slurping the chocolate-chip-stained milk from a bowl, finally feeling free, free from destiny and fate, free from all the things that made me useful, needed. 

“Hey, Jack,” a voice says. I can’t feel his power at all anymore, like I could before, but I know it’s him. 

“Hello,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say to God when he’s finally come to kill me.

Chuck sits across from me and turns the cereal box toward him. He reads the side panel, “You know, maybe you should eat a little healthier now that you’re…human.” He shoves a handful of cereal into his mouth. “And it doesn’t even taste good.”

“Well, I like it.” I slide the box over to the edge of the table. “What do you want?”

“I came to talk to you, make you an offer.” Chuck folds his arms across his chest. If I had my grace, my powers, I’d smite him right now. 

“Yeah, what’s that?” I ask.

He leans forward and clasps his hands together. “You used to be the most powerful being in the entire universe. More powerful than me, more powerful than Amara. And now, look at you. Dean Winchester sold you out for Castiel? Broken, pathetic Castiel? The angel who fell so many times he became human? Aren’t you angry? Don’t you realize what Dean did to you?” 

“No. Cas is my father, and I would have done the same, if Dean didn’t.” 

“All this Cas is my father crap. Castiel isn’t your father. Your father is Lucifer. An archangel. You weren’t meant to be like this, Jack,” Chuck says. “You weren’t meant to be human.”

“I don’t think I was meant to be anything.” 

“But you were, and Dean, he ruined all that for you. If you come with me though, after I’m done here, we can go to the Empty, get your grace back…destroy this world and start all over. We can create worlds together, Jack. Worlds better than this one. I’m over this world. I’m over Sam and Dean. I’m over what’s going on behind those closed doors right now.” 

“I like this world,” I sit up straight in my chair. “And I don’t want to destroy it, and I don’t want you to destroy it. I just want you to bring everyone back.”

He laughs. “Why would I do that? Why would I bring everyone back? So I can listen to their prayers? All the prayers I’ll never answer? I’m done listening. Do they really think I care enough, to cure their cancers? Fix their marriages? Heal their children? I don’t care about a single one of them.” He extends his hand out to me. “But you. You aren’t one of them. Let me show you what I can give you.”

He grabs me by the wrists, drags me halfway across the table. And I see her, sitting alone in her Heaven, and she calls to me, she tells me everything will be okay. She tells me how much she misses me, how much she loves me, she tells me to bring her back, to let us be together, be a family, finally. 

“You’ll give me my mother?” I twist my arms until I’m free from his grip. 

“Right, I’ll bring her back to you. In some new world we create. A world without Sam and Dean Winchester.” Chuck runs his fingers through his beard, taps his fingers on the arm of his chair. “All you have to do is help me now…help me end this. All the other Sams and all the other Deans, it always ends the same for them. You can help me make that happen. You can help me fix the one thing, that makes this world different than the others, the one thing that keeps coming back, that’s not supposed to be here.”

I turn my eyes up to him, “I won’t hurt Cas.”

“Not even for your mother? Not even so that you could be with her?”

“My mother wouldn’t want that. I know she wouldn’t,” I remember my mother’s voice more than I remember her face, I remember her telling me that Castiel is my father, that he would protect me, keep me safe from the world. “You can kill me, again, before I’ll hurt Cas. You can kill me for good before I’ll do that.”

“You’ve really been with the Winchesters for too long. Always willing to sacrifice yourself for someone else,” he says. “So now you can watch them destroy each other. You can watch them destroy Castiel. And then you can watch this world burn and you can burn with it.”

“Sam and Dean will never give in to you, they aren’t going to give you what you want, ever. Not this Sam and Dean,” I stand up and try my best to loom over him, try to intimidate God. “And not me.”

“Jack…right now, I’m the only thing keeping Sam Winchester from being the monster he was always supposed to be. The monster at the end of this book.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, Sam Winchester. The boy with the demon blood. I fixed him once, made him…sane…cured his addiction. Stopped him from destroying everything. But not anymore.” God raises his hand in front of my face and smiles. And for the first time today, I regret being powerless, defenseless….human. 

He snaps his fingers. And then he’s gone.


	11. Blessed with a Curse (Dean/Sam/Ruby)

Dean’s sweat drips onto the back of Castiel’s neck. He pulls his body away from Castiel’s, completely drained, and drops onto the bed beside him. Shuddering from the feeling of Dean slipping out of him, Castiel turns his head toward Dean, his hands still gripping the edges of the sheets. What they just did, the things Dean had muttered into his ear while they did it, is more than Castiel can even begin to comprehend right now.

Castiel’s shoulders are still wet with Dean’s saliva. There are teeth marks on Castiel’s back, evidence of Dean’s attempt to silence himself as he finished. 

Dean looks away, at the bare walls, at his clothes in a wet pile on the floor. All he can hear is the sound of Castiel breathing, unsteady, erratic, fighting to recover. Dean runs his hand down his own body. He should go clean himself up, he should go get dressed, but he doesn’t want to move, he just wants to lay here, pretend this moment can go on for eternity and that there’s nothing else, no one else, but the two of them. No God, no world to save.

And Dean is sure that, somewhere, Chuck knows all about this, knows all about what Dean has done. That he knows the angels were right, that Dean’s very touch corrupts. And after Castiel had been God’s obedient soldier for millennia, Dean Winchester had destroyed it all, destroyed Castiel’s grace, destroyed Chuck’s creation. 

Dean doesn’t know what to call what he’s done to Castiel. Desecration, maybe. Probably.

And Dean doesn’t know what to do, or say, right now. Right now is usually the part where he’d get up, give an excuse, write down a fake phone number, leave forever. Or the part when someone would do the same to him. He just knows he wants to stay here, because for the first time, ever, he feels like he matters, to someone, for something. 

“Are you happy…now?” Dean asks.

“I am, but we didn’t have to…” Castiel lifts his head off the bed. 

“I wanted to,” Dean raises himself on his elbows. “And I thought you did…”

“You know I wanted to. Of course I wanted to. But did you want this before I told you…..before the Empty took me?” Castiel rolls over onto his back, pulls the blanket over his hips. 

There were a thousand nights Dean thought about doing what they’d just done here, in his unmade bed, in the middle of the end of the world. There were a thousand nights he convinced himself that this couldn’t, shouldn’t happen. And there were a thousand times he told himself that it had to be his secret. But Dean’s eyes drift over to Castiel’s. “Yes.”

In the hallway, Sam’s hand hovers over the doorknob to Dean’s room. He can hear Dean and Castiel, talking, but he can’t hear what they’re saying. He could get it over with, all at once. He could leave them both, Dean, and Cas, dead, in Dean’s bed. And then maybe Chuck would set him free, bring back Eileen. At least that’s what all the demon blood and visions in his head are trying to convince him is the right thing, the only thing to do.

Sam had left Ruby, bleeding and maybe barely alive, on his bed. He can still hear her, from his room, a strained voice, telling him not to, that this is all God, God trying to save himself. But all Sam wants, right now, is to fix this the way Chuck wants—to erase Castiel from this story, to give Chuck the Cain and Abel fantasy that he’s wanted all along.

Castiel needs to die, for real, for everything he’s done. For his disobedience. For his free will.

And Dean needs to die, for Sam to escape this life.

At least, that’s what Chuck says.

“No,” Sam tells himself, stepping back from Dean’s door, fighting everything going on in his brain. “No, I won’t do this.”

He stumbles through the hall and into the Bunker’s dungeon, shutting the door behind him, closing his eyes and pressing his head into the wall. He can see Eileen, lost, alone, in some other dimension, asking him to bring her back, before it’s too late, before she’s gone forever. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Eileen. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.”

He can still taste Ruby’s blood on his tongue, and he wants to regret fucking her again, he wants to regret how much he likes fucking her, but all he can regret, right now, is that he didn’t kill Castiel, that he didn’t kill Dean.  


And Sam knows, this is what he was always supposed to become, and that he’d only held himself together all these years, because Chuck was the one making sure he didn’t fall apart. 

His powers, his abilities, that he once used against demons, against Hell—they’re all back, and he’d give anything to use them, against God—but he realizes, God is using it all against him. That God is destroying him from the inside out. 

Ruby manages to sit up, in the center of Sam’s bed, pulling her clothes over her blood-streaked body. Disoriented, she makes her way to the doorway, and out in the hall. She calls to Sam, but he doesn’t answer, and she stands, in front of Dean’s room. She wonders if she should just leave. She can find another way back to Hell. She doesn’t need Sam Winchester, or Dean Winchester, or Castiel, or their God problems. She’s supposed to be a villain in this story. Maybe. She doesn’t know anymore. 

She opens Dean’s door. Dean drags a pillow across his body, holding it at his waist. “Fuck,” he says. “Maybe next time knock.” He looks over at Castiel, tries to think of some way to explain this to Ruby, but he doesn’t need to, or want to, or have to, explain this to anyone. 

At the foot of Dean’s bed, Ruby says, “There’s something wrong with Sam. And it’s not just the demon blood this time.”

“You let him have your blood…again?” Castiel brings the blanket up further on his stomach. 

“Yes, and before you blame me, that was Dean’s idea. The whole reason he agreed to take me out of the Empty. For Sam to use me to fight God,” Ruby puts her knee up onto the mattress, leaning forward. “But Sam isn’t going to fight God, because God is using Sam, and God wants both of you dead.”


	12. Blasphemy (Dean/Ruby)

This is the end. 

Dean can feel it, as soon as he sees Sam. There’s dried blood in the corners of his lips, down his throat, under his fingernails. “Get away from me,” Sam says. “I can’t control it.”

“Can’t control what?” Dean shakes him forward, like this is just some nightmare that Sam will wake up from, like everything will be okay in the morning. 

“Anything, I can’t control anything. The psychic stuff. The demon blood. The visions from Chuck,” Sam pulls away, because the voices in his head are telling him to wrap his hands around Dean’s throat, choke the life out of him right there, in front of Castiel, and Jack, and Ruby. “Everything that you tried to save me from becoming, I am.”

“You can do this, Sammy. You always do,” Dean says, and he knows the words coming out of his mouth are nothing but lies.

“I can’t, Dean,” Sam tilts his head toward the ceiling. “And I don’t want to. This time, I’m giving in. Giving God what he wants. It’s my only chance, to be happy, my only chance to bring Eileen back.” 

“You believe Chuck?” Dean stands, stepping away from Sam. “Since when has Chuck ever done a goddamn thing for us?”

“What else can I do?” Sam leans back against the wall. “It was supposed to be Jack, Jack was supposed to beat God. But you ruined it, Dean. You, you always ruin everything. From the night you showed up in my apartment, all those years ago, I never should have left Jess, I never should have gone with you.”

“I know that’s not you talking, Sam, I know it’s Chuck,” but Dean isn’t sure, and he knows, maybe Sam is right. Dean breaks everything he touches; Sam, Cas, Jack. “Fight it, Sam, don’t let him win.”

“But he already has,” Sam pulls himself off the ground. “He won the minute you destroyed Jack to save Cas. And now I just have to finish this and clean up your mess.”

Dean runs his fingers along the cold metal of his gun in the pocket of his jacket, and he knows what he should do, but he knows he can’t do it, that he’ll never be able to do it. It was his job, to protect Sam, to save Sam from turning into this, and he failed, and he knows he needs to give in, give up. 

“Do it,” Dean reaches out to Sam, the gun hanging loosely from his hand. “Do it. Let Cas and Jack and Ruby go. Isn’t this all Chuck wants? One brother kills the other? This is all you need to do. And then you’ll be free from me.” 

Dean feels Castiel, trying to drag him away from Sam, but Dean ignores him, because if he doesn’t, Dean will never accept that this is it, how, when, he dies. Because if he looks at Castiel, right now, he’ll never be able to let himself go.

From across the room, Chuck claps. The loud kind of clap, the kind of clap where one hand folds into the other. The kind of clap that pierces the air and echoes off the dungeon walls. Sam lowers the gun, points it down at the floor, and slumps back down onto the concrete. He puts his hands over his face, a string of incoherent words escaping his mouth. 

“Come on, don’t stop, this was just getting good,” Chuck says. 

Castiel takes Chuck by the collar of his shirt and throws him up against the brick wall. “Whatever you’re doing to him, to Sam, stop, now.”

“Why would I listen to you, Castiel? Look at you. You’re nothing, nobody.” Chuck laughs. “You were always a nobody. Even in Heaven. But, I guess, now you don’t even have the whole angel thing going for you. Why should I care what you want?” 

“Because I’m the one, the only one, who doesn’t listen, who has never listened, the one with—what did you say? Right, the one with a crack in his chassis.” Castiel says. “Because no matter what you do to them, you can’t control me, right?”

“Yeah, free will incarnate or something. That’s you. And you used that free will to fall, lose your grace, for Dean Winchester. Of all people. Couldn’t you pick someone a little less…I don’t know…fucked in the head?” Chuck leans back, struggling against Castiel, managing to turn himself around, so that he’s facing Castiel. “I can’t control you but at least now it will be real easy to kill you.” 

Castiel shoves his arm against Chuck’s throat. “What are you doing to Sam? Fix him.”

“I already fixed him. A long time ago. I guess now you can call this…unfixing?” Chuck says, pushing Castiel backward, enough to slip away from him.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dean turns to Chuck. 

Chuck smiles and walks to the center of the room, picking up the chair that’s still lying knocked over on the floor and leaning his arms on it. “Remember when Sam got better? From the demon blood addiction, from all that psychic yellow-eyed-demon crap? That was all me. And, after Sam shot me, I took it all away. I let it all come back slowly. But not just that—Sam and I are still linked, even though our wounds are healed, and I’ve been feeding him, my memories, my power. Creating something—I don’t know—God-like, but I guess a little more demonic, a little more evil, right Sam?”

“Fuck you,” Sam lifts his head toward Chuck.

“Come on, Sam, you knew this was happening. You thought you used a spell to make your brother an angel, send him to the Empty, and bring him back? You thought Sam fucking Winchester did that?” Chuck slides down onto the floor, next to Sam. “That power, it was all mine, not that I really wanted you to use it to save Castiel, but whatever, we’ll fix that.”

“You have no power in the Empty,” Ruby steps toward Chuck. “I was there for a long time, and the Empty doesn’t care about you.” 

Chuck shrugs, “That’s true, but Amara has power in the Empty. And she’s right in here.” He points to his chest. “For now, until I can absorb her completely, destroy her. And the only thing left, to balance me, to balance the light, will be Sam.” 

“You’re turning Sam into the Darkness?” Jack asks, from the doorway. 

“Not exactly - I’m just turning Sam into what he was always supposed to be,” Chuck rises from the floor. “And the rest of you, well, I’ve had enough. Your stories need to end.”

*** 

Dean opens his eyes, in the field where he had begged over and over for Castiel to come back to him, the field where Sam had killed him, resurrected him. Above him, the sky glows bright red, and he squints through the snow that’s falling, building up on the ground. Chuck stands above him, “Do you like it? I thought this was a good aesthetic for the apocalypse. But I mean, I can change it. So let me know.”

“What do you want?” Dean asks. “I’ll do it, I’ll do anything, just stop this. Bring everyone back. You can kill me. I don’t matter. You can do whatever you want to me. I don’t care. Just don’t do this. You have to bring them back.”

“What do I want?” Chuck puts his hand on his chin. “Well, Sam knows, and I’ll let him tell you.” 

Sam pulls Dean’s head back, tilts his face up toward the crimson horizon. “Kill Cas, and Chuck will bring everyone, Eileen, back,” Sam presses Dean’s gun into his palm. “Do it, for me, because you made me into the hunter I never wanted to be. So kill him, so I can have Eileen, so I can finally have what I deserve.”

“No,” Dean holds his hand out, balancing the gun on his fingers. “No. Never. We’ll find a way, Sam. Don’t do this. Fight him, fight Chuck.” 

“We won’t find a way, Dean. This is it. There was a way. But you needed Cas back, and now I need Eileen.” The parts of Sam’s brain, that knew this was all wrong, that knew Dean could never survive doing this, survive murdering Castiel, are all gone, and he doesn’t care, doesn’t care that Dean is about to fall apart. All he wants is Castiel dead, Dean dead, all he wants is whatever Chuck wants. 

“Do it Dean, and I’ll bring back Eileen, and Donna, and Jody, and Claire, and everybody else. And if you don’t, all I need to do is snap my fingers – and they’ll be gone forever,” Chuck looks up toward the sky. It’s snowing harder now, and the wind rattles and howls through the trees behind them. Like the world is screaming, fading around them. 

“So which is it Dean?” Sam asks. “Who dies, Cas, or everybody else?”

Castiel is kneeling in the white powder collecting on the grass. He looks up at Dean, resigned, hopeless, giving Dean permission to obey, succumb. 

Chuck puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder, over the stain of Castiel’s handprint on Dean’s jacket. “Come on, Dean.”

And Dean can see now, what he’s never been able to see, what was buried somewhere inside him. Castiel pulling him from Hell, Castiel pulling him off the rack and dragging him out the fire, Castiel touching his soul, Castiel healing his mangled body. Castiel putting him back together, Castiel saving him, over and over again.

Dean points the gun at Sam. “You know, it took me a long time to realize that Dad was wrong about mostly everything. Except you. Except he was right, when he told me you’re a monster.” 

“You won’t shoot me, Dean, I know you won’t. I know you can’t, because you’re weak. So do this for me, for Eileen, for everyone but yourself.” Sam pulls at Castiel’s hair, holds him still. “Show him that he’s wrong about you, show him that he never should have fallen in love with you. Show him that you really are a killer.” 

Ruby slides the blade that Castiel had given her, back at the Bunker, from the inside of her jacket. She had told him that he was insane, for giving this to her, for trusting her. But then he had said that, maybe she was right all along, and maybe the two of them really aren’t that different. And she’s the only one with a chance, the only one who can maybe fight God. And Chuck doesn’t care about her, he’s too fixated on Sam and Dean, and everything else. And he doesn’t realize she’s behind him, waiting, the angel blade reflecting the blood-red color of the sky onto the whitening grass, pink shadows on the ground in front of her. 

She knows this won’t kill Chuck, but maybe, it will hurt him enough, slow him down. But she doesn’t know why she’s saving Dean Winchester, and she doesn’t why she wants to save him. 

“Do it, Dean.” Sam grabs Dean by the wrist, struggling against Dean to aim the gun at Castiel.

Beside her, Jack is quietly begging Sam to stop, asking someone to make this end. Ruby puts her hand on his back, “I’ll try.”

She moves forward, toward Chuck, and she digs the blade into his spine, she twists it, and twists it, and he screams and laughs all at once. He stands, motionless, as his blood drips down onto the snow, spreading red stains by his feet. Then he pulls the blade from his body and throws it on the ground. “What was that supposed to do?” he turns to Ruby and pulls her in front of him, holding her arms behind her back. “Sam, after we’re done with these two, this one is next.”

“Of course,” Sam says, motioning to Dean. “Get this over with already, Dean. Shoot him. And then shoot yourself. You deserve to die for this. You deserve to die for everyone else.”

“Don’t do this, Sam. Don’t make Dean do this. You know this isn’t you. Don’t let God have his way,” Ruby tries to pull herself away from Chuck, and she can feel something, something changing, in his grip. 

Castiel turns his face up to Dean’s, snow stuck in his dark hair, eyes rimmed with red. “It’s okay Dean. Do it, save everyone, save yourself. I told you, I was never supposed to be here anyway. You were never supposed to save me.”

Dean falls to the ground in front of Castiel. He pulls Castiel closer to him, presses Castiel’s forehead against his own and whispers, “It’s going to be okay, Cas, I promise. It’s going to be okay.” Dean kisses him, hard, like he could never, ever have enough of him, holding his fingers against the back of Castiel’s head, in his hair, opening his mouth against Castiel’s lips just enough to say, “I love you, Cas. Fuck, I love you so much.”

And Dean stands, puts his finger on the trigger, and prays.


	13. God Is She (Jack/Dean/Amara)

Jack chokes on the smell of burning flesh. There’s an explosion of white light, and he can’t see anything, can’t hear anything except a constant ringing in his head, and he clasps his ears, tries to drown out the noise, but it’s stuck in his brain, and he can’t make it stop. 

He knows they’re all dead, they have to be. Cas, Sam, Dean, Ruby. And Jack doesn’t know what Chuck did, but he knows once the black smoke that’s blinding him clears, there won’t be anything left of anyone. 

It was supposed to be him, blown away, destroyed to destroy God. But now he’s alone, and there’s nothing left for Chuck to do with him, except kill him too, or maybe something even worse.

He knows, what he needs to do, what Sam and Dean would do, what Sam and Dean would have wanted. He needs to find another way, to end God. To save the world, on his own, even though all the things that once made him everything he was, are gone forever. Even though he knows he’s going to fail. 

So he walks through the thick fog, and it stings his eyes, it makes him cough, it hangs in the air and floats just above the ground. The snow is melting under his feet, sticking in the soles of his sneakers. 

There’s a clearing in front of him, and he stops. He could turn around now, before he has to face the burned-out corpses of his family, before he has to face God, alone and human and powerless. 

In the shadows of the smoke, someone, something moves toward him.

He should have listened to Dean, should have taken a gun, or knife, something. But Jack knew that, if it came to this, if it came down to him fighting for himself, that it meant everyone was dead and he didn’t stand a chance, and that he was almost dead too.

Above him, the world has turned some kind of dark purple, Chuck’s red sky mixing with the dawn. The smoke is getting thinner, and through the haze, he squints, and calls out their names, the names of the only family he’s ever had, but there’s nothing except a high-pitched drone, playing in loop. 

He moves forward, leaving the dark mist behind him, and he sees her, standing in a pile of ash and embers and bone.

“Amara?” Jack’s breath evaporates into the air in front of him. 

She turns to him, “Maybe now I can get to know you?”

“Chuck is dead?” Jack looks down at the ground, at the fire flickering around Amara’s feet.

“Yes.” As she speaks, Jack can tell she’s struggling to admit it.

Still kneeling in front of Dean, Castiel opens his eyes. Sam is unconscious in the ice-strewn grass beside him. Castiel can’t tell if Sam is still breathing, can’t tell if he’s alive. Dean drops his gun, pulls at the collar of Sam’s shirt, shakes him, lifts Sam by the shoulders so that his head is on Dean’s legs. “Fix him, please, don’t let this happen. Come on, Sam.”

“When he wakes up, it will all be gone, all of it,” she says. “Chuck can’t control him anymore.”

“Why did you help us?” Castiel stands, his clothes wet from the snow. 

“I didn’t have a choice, Dean, he needed me,” Amara lifts her hands, pulling back some of the smoke that surrounds them, silencing the crackling flames beneath her. “And I can’t hurt Dean. What Chuck was going to make him do to you, it would have killed him.”

Dean can’t look at her. He had been ready to sacrifice her, to let Jack slaughter her. And then he had begged for her when he had nothing else, no hope. 

“You were ready to die for everyone, Dean. But you wouldn’t let Castiel die for anyone. I could feel your despair, it gave me the strength to overcome my brother. So, I forgive you, Dean.” She looks up at the brightening sky and turns to Ruby, “But I couldn’t have done it without you. You made him weak, he couldn’t fight me any longer. Thank you.”

“Are you God now?” Ruby steps back. 

“No, I’m not God,” Amara says. “I can never be like him. I don’t know why he did this, why he did these things to all of you.”

“But, how can it be just you? Doesn’t the universe need balance, or something like that?” Jack stands over the blackened pile of flesh and bone that was once God. 

“Chuck told you that, right? He told me that too, so that I would believe that I needed him.” Amara places her hand over the ash, makes it dissipate into the clouds. “My brother created this world, and there are parts of it that are beautiful, but so much of it is so, so ugly. He called himself a creator, the light, but he stood by, and let people destroy one another. He let the world collapse into sickness and turmoil, and he enjoyed it. Just a plot twist in one of his stories. He let terrible things happen to people who didn’t deserve any of it. And most of the time, he just abandoned you. He was the light and the darkness, and he convinced everyone—even me—that I was the one who embodied pure destruction. But I’m not him, and I don’t want to end this world, and I don’t need him. I realize now that I never did.”

“So what? Now you just go up to Heaven, tell them you killed Chuck and that you’re in charge now?” Dean presses his fingers against Sam’s neck, the feeling of his pulse the only thing convincing him that he’s actually alive. “You have to bring everyone back. You can’t leave us like this.”

“I’m not going back to Heaven, Not right away anyway. I have a lot I need to fix here, and in a lot of other worlds, ones that Chuck destroyed,” she says. “And I’ll bring most of them back. But not everyone will be the same. Because you need to know peace, for once, Dean.”

“What does that mean? Just bring everyone back,” Dean tries to stand, tries to let an unconscious Sam slide onto the ground, but Amara bends down next to him, wrapping her fingers around his arm.

“I’ll bring everyone back. But the vampires and the witches and the werewolves, those were Chuck’s creations, and if there are still monsters in closets and under beds, I know you’ll never give up on this life. So some will come back human, and some will stay locked away.” She snaps her fingers in the air, and the sounds of life, of traffic moving miles away, of an airplane somewhere in the clouds, rush through the atmosphere. “Maybe this isn’t what you want, but it’s what you need.”

“Why? Why would you do that for me?” 

“I’m just giving you what you, and Sam, and Castiel, and Jack deserve. A world that you don’t need to save. A world without the supernatural.”

“No angels, no demons? No constant apocalypses?” Dean doesn’t know if he can imagine a world where he can close his eyes at night without being haunted by a thousand ghosts, without thinking about who needs him, without thinking about who’s dying without him. “What about Ruby? She’s still here.”

“The angels will stay in heaven, demons in hell, like it’s supposed to be,” Amara stands, walking beside Ruby. “Except Ruby. Ruby’s right—Rowena needs help in Hell. Stopping whatever demon insurrection is going on. Working with Heaven to make sure everything’s under control. No angel-demon wars, no more attempts to overthrow the world, or whatever Chuck let happen.”

“So, what, I’m like Hell’s Ambassador or something now?” Ruby pulls herself from Amara. 

“You can call it that. Or you can stay here, and, eventually, you’ll turn, just like Castiel. You already know that though, don’t you?” 

“I don’t belong here.” Ruby could feel it, the minute Dean saved her from the Empty. She could feel humanity, seeping back through her veins. She could feel herself fading, even before Sam had started draining her. 

“I know,” Amara says. “Neither do I.” 

“So this is it?” Dean is still counting Sam’s heart beats, still wondering if this is all Chuck, still wondering if Chuck will be back to murder them all. “Cas is just human, and Sam and me—we’re normal? Hunters with nothing to hunt?”

“You’re free. All of you.” Amara turns to Jack, whispers into his ear, and then she vanishes, and Ruby vanishes, and Dean puts his head into his hands, and falls forward over Sam. 

“You saved the entire world, Dean. You’re done. It’s over,” Castiel says. 

“I didn’t save the world,” Dean turns his face up to Castiel's. “I thought Sam was gone. I thought the world was gone. I only prayed to save you.”

Against the twilight, Sam opens his eyes. He can’t remember anything, how he got here, why his entire body hurts, or why the air smells like burnt decay. “Dean, what the hell happened?”

Dean collapses back into the dead, brown grass where God was finally destroyed. 

“We won.”


	14. Somewhat Damaged (Sam/Eileen)

Sam knows that this is probably a mistake. That this probably won’t end well. That this is all his fault. He had told Eileen to meet him here, in this park, because he knew there would be too many people here—walking, jogging, playing—for her to really rip him apart. Even though he knows that’s really what he deserves, after all this. 

He had considered, maybe convinced himself, that the best thing of all would be to never tell her about the psychic powers, the demon blood, Ruby. To just tell her that they’d defeated Chuck, that it was over, all over, and they could finally live their lives without worrying about all the things that went bump in the night, because all those things, they’re all gone now.

But Dean said he had to do this, said he had to let Eileen know everything.

So Sam checks the time on his phone again, and wonders if she already knows, if she just won’t show up. He reads through the frantic texts he’d sent her, before she had disappeared, stares at the “I’m back. I’m okay,” message she had sent to him, and the heart-eyed emoji she’d followed it with. 

Over the past few hours, hazy pieces of the last couple of days have seeped back into his brain—bringing Dean back from the Empty, a dozen fights with Dean for sacrificing Jack’s grace for Cas, Cas, barely alive and human, in the back of the Impala, telling him over and over again that they should have never saved him, Ruby bloody in his bed.

Every single thing he had done, had only made things worse, and every single thing he had done, was all because Chuck was controlling him. He had believed that he, on his own, could save everyone. But it was Dean, and Cas, and Jack, and Ruby, and Amara, who had finally ended it all, and Sam hadn’t been anything other than God’s pawn in another Armageddon. 

Eileen wraps her arms around him, kisses him, and says “You did it, Sam. You saved the world, again.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Sam hands her a paper coffee cup, holding down the plastic lid. “It’s just how you like it.”

She signs, “thank you” and sits down beside him, placing her bag down on the ground. She leans her head on his shoulder, “I missed you.”

“Where were you? Were you hurt? What was it like?” Sam takes a sip of his own coffee, and it spills down his chin and onto his shirt. He wipes it with the back of his hand. 

“It was just, nothing. It was cold and dark. Lonely, I guess,” she says, watching a group of teenagers ride by on bicycles. “Mostly I was afraid I wouldn’t see you again. But I think I always knew that you would save everyone.”

“I think, mostly, I fucked everything up,” Sam puts his hand on hers. “It wasn’t me who saved you, and it wasn’t me who brought everyone back. Eileen, you need to know what happened, I need to let you know, the things I did—and then, I need you to decide if you really want to be with me.”

And then he tells her everything, and he can tell how carefully she watches his lips as he speaks, reading every word, the things he can remember, and the things that Dean, and Cas, and Jack all told him. About the spell, how he used Chuck’s power and Amara’s power to make Dean into some kind of angel, that he sent him to the Empty to save Cas, that he brought him back, that Dean made some kind of deal with the Empty, Jack’s grace for Cas, for Ruby. About all the demon blood, about how he couldn’t control himself, about Ruby. About how Chuck had taken over him entirely, and that it was Dean who had summoned Amara, broken her free. About how, everything they hunted, everything they spent their lives fighting, is locked away now, far, far from Earth.

“I’m so, so sorry,” he signs.

Eileen doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t look at him. She digs the heel of her boot into the dirt beneath the bench, and she watches a swing on the playground sway back and forth in the wind. She drinks her coffee, and slides herself further from Sam, her fingers moving along the chipped blue paint of the bench’s slats. She taps her red nails on the iron arm rest. 

Finally, she turns to Sam, and says, “I could do so much better than you.”

“I know, I know you could,” Sam closes his eyes. He should have tried harder, to fight against Chuck, to fight the urges. He should have tried harder not to mess this all up. “I love you, Eileen, but I understand if this is it, and you never want to see me again.”

“No, that’s not what I want, Sam. Look, when Chuck tricked us that time, and he had us at that casino in Nebraska, he made me torture you. I had no control over it, he made me stick that scalpel in you again and again and I couldn’t stop it, as much as every part of me wanted to.” Eileen puts her empty coffee cup on the ground by her feet and pulls her dark hair away from her face. “So I know what it’s like. And I love you, too. But that doesn’t mean I forgive you for this, or that I’m not angry about Ruby. But, we’ve always been complicated, and we’ve figured it out so maybe we can figure this out too.”

“I don’t deserve you,” Sam says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He kicks his feet around in the pile of dead leaves gathered on the ground. A woman walks by pushing a baby stroller, a dog on a leash sniffs the air and barks before continuing down the sidewalk. All these people, who never realized, never understood, the things that were out there, the things that lurked in the dark, are safe now, and Sam knows he had nothing to do with it. 

Eileen brushes her arm into his. “You don’t. And this doesn’t mean it’s going to work out. But you and me, we’ve been hunters since we were kids, we don’t know anything else—and now, you’re telling me that everything, all those monsters, are just gone? So, I don’t really know what that means for me, or you. And I don’t know who we are anymore, if we aren’t hunters, but maybe we can figure that out together.”

“Maybe,” Sam can hear the hesitancy in her voice, and he wonders how long it will be before she regrets everything she’s saying. 

“And who knows, maybe it will work out. Maybe you and me, we can go back to school, get normal jobs, pretend to be normal people, with a normal house, normal problems, something like that,” she laughs. “Whatever normal means for us, after all this.”

“Being normal, that’s what I always wanted, from the minute I realized that Dean and I weren’t normal at all. When, you know, I realized, other kids didn’t get dragged around and left in shitty motels while their fathers hunted ghosts,” Sam leans forward on the bench. “But, there were times, I thought—why would I ever want to just be normal? I thought it wasn’t for me, I guess. Sometimes, I thought I had been crazy—what was I thinking, when I was a kid? Becoming a lawyer, living behind some white picket fence. Sometimes that sounded more like a nightmare than the one I was living. But then I brought you back and being normal—that’s all I want.”

Eileen stands up, and puts her hand out to Sam, “So let’s try to be normal, you and me, an ex-demon blood addict and the woman you brought back from the dead.”


	15. Eulogy (Jack/Castiel)

“I made you a sandwich,” Jack puts a paper dish on the table in front of Castiel. “It’s peanut butter and jelly, because I think you said you liked that when you were human the last time. And I don’t think you’ve eaten all day. Humans have to eat..”

Castiel lifts his head off the table. He had forgotten how it was, to need sleep, to need food. “Thanks.”

Jack sits down across from him, and says, “Do you feel like something is missing from inside you? Like there’s a part of you, that’s supposed to be there, and it’s just gone? But you don’t miss it?”

Castiel looks down at the sandwich. The crust is missing from the edges of the bread, the same way that Dean always cuts it off for Jack. “That’s exactly how I feel, and I guess, how I was feeling for awhile, before this.”

Jack nods, “I think I’m happy, for the first time, maybe ever. There isn’t this burden, hanging over me. Actually, there were so many burdens…killing God, your deal with the Empty….and now, all of that is over. But I’m also really scared, Cas. I don’t know how to be a three-year-old in the body of a twenty-year-old or whatever. What do I do, Cas? I don’t know how to be human, not really.”

“I guess that’s something we have to work on together, because I don’t either,” Castiel takes a bite of the sandwich; there’s too much jelly and it drips down, out of the bread, onto the plate. 

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” Jack pushes a napkin across the table. “Last night, before everything, Chuck came to see me. He tried to get me to make a deal, if I killed you, he would give me my grace, and my mother.”  
“Why didn’t you take that deal? Why would you choose me over your mother?” Castiel tilts his head in the fluorescent light of the kitchen.

“Before Amara left, she told me that, I’m her family, and she’ll watch over me, forever. But, really, she’s not family. Chuck wasn’t family. And Lucifer was never really my father. You were, you are, and you always have been,” Jack says. “And I love my mother and I’ll miss her forever, but she’s at peace, and you, and Dean, and Sam, you’re my family. And you made that deal to save me, and I didn’t understand why, why someone would do that for someone else…but, I do, now. I get it.”

“I did what I had to.”

“Cas, can I ask you a weird question? And you can say no to it, if you want.”

“You can ask me whatever you want, Jack.”

“Okay,” Jack looks down at the table, trying to think of the right words, not knowing how to say what he wants to say, not knowing how Castiel will react. “Can I call you Dad? I mean, because…we’re both human now, and you raised me, took care of me, and, I don’t know, you’re my Dad, right? You always have been,” Jack’s voice shakes as he speaks. “So, I would like to just call you Dad, but I get it if you don’t want me to.”

“Of course you can,” Castiel moves the dish away from him. “I would like that too.” 

“That makes me…happy,” Jack sits back in his seat. 

“This is the first time you’ve ever been happy?” Castiel shifts himself forward, twisting the napkin Jack had given him around his finger. “You were never happy, here, with me, and Dean, and Sam?”

“Was I happy? No not really.” Jack doesn’t know if he should admit any of this; things he’s never told anyone, things he’s never even really let himself think about. Because he never cared whether he was happy, because it didn’t matter, because he had only been on a mission to kill God. “It’s funny. When I had all this power, I was weak, vulnerable, because everyone thought that power was theirs to use. And now that my grace is gone, and I’m nothing but human, I’m more powerful than ever. Because no one can try to use me, because I have nothing to use and because I’m just like everyone else. And I feel like I finally have control over myself, and I can never hurt anyone again, I can never do…what I did to Mary…I can never do that again, and that’s all that matters to me.”

“I’m sorry, Jack, that we used you,” Castiel says. “And I’m sorry, that I let your powers…get out of control.” 

“You didn’t. But I understand why Dean, why he wanted me to kill Chuck. I understand everything now, I think. And I’m ready to just…start over, to be human, with my family, with you.” 

“Me too.” Castiel smiles, and Jack realizes it’s maybe the first time he’d seen him look anything but miserable, since he’d come back, from the Empty, since Dean had saved him.

“You made a deal, that you would be taken forever once you were happy,” Jack watches the light flicker over their heads. “But you’re free now, you can be happy…are you?”

Castiel turns his eyes up to the ceiling, to the Heaven that let him fall. “I think maybe I am.”


	16. Bad Company (Sam/Dean)

There are guns and knives and ammunition everywhere. A broken wooden stake lays on top of a pile of shovels. Chains and ropes are tangled in the center of a spare tire. Dean throws a cracked EMF meter on the cement floor of the garage. He scrapes away at the devil’s trap painted on the inside of the Impala’s trunk, wiping the white powder flaked on his fingers across his jeans. 

It’s over. Finally. The nightmare he’s been living since he was four years-old. The nightmare that began with Dean carrying Sam away from the flames, the nightmare that ended in the ashes of God. Dean sits down on the ground, pressing the back of his neck into the cold metal bumper surrounding the license plate. It’s over. And he doesn’t know what to do, where to go. All he’s ever been, his entire life, was a hunter. And now he’s nothing. He’s Dean Winchester. Dean Winchester, almost 42 years-old with a GED, a give ‘em hell attitude, and a blank resume. Except for the demon-killing.

His phone has been vibrating in his pocket all afternoon. Texts from Donna, Jody, Charlie, Claire, Garth, Bobby, thanking him, telling him that everyone is fine, telling him it’s all because of him. They don’t know, how close he had been to the edge. How he had prayed for Amara to save Cas, how he had prayed for Amara to just take him instead.

He pulls at the collar of his shirt, moving it down just enough for him to see the empty skin where his anti-possession tattoo had been. It had healed, disappeared, when Sam had done the angel spell. And now, there’s no reason for him to get a new one, no reason because all the demons are gone. 

He pours another sip of whiskey through his lips, and it stings his throat. He tosses the bottle down next to him. He hasn’t slept in days. His face falls into the palms of his hands, and every time he closes his eyes, all he can see is Chuck’s bright red sky, Sam losing his mind, Cas staring down the barrel of his gun. But it’s over, all over.

Sam drops his duffel bag by his feet and leans against the open trunk. “Already?”

“There’s no reason to drive around with a grenade launcher, right?” Dean looks up at Sam, at his jacket. “You’re leaving? It hasn’t even been a day.”

“I’m just going to go stay with Eileen for awhile…,” Sam slides down onto the floor next to Dean. “She’s staying about a half hour from here.”

“You’re still leaving. And you aren’t coming back,” Dean rolls his head along the edge of the car.

“I need time, to figure things out, and I can’t do it here, in the middle of this, in the bedroom where I just got high off demon blood for days,” Sam says. 

“And what happens when you and Eileen figure it out, and you will, because you always do, and I’m still here, in this fucking bunker? What happens six months, a year from now, when you’ve been able to move on, and I’m sitting in this same spot, because all I know how to be is a hunter?” Dean kicks aside a wrench that’s lying by his foot.

Sam picks up a bullet off the floor and holds it between his fingers. “You saved the world, Dean. You got what you wanted. You got your toes in the sand ending.” 

“And now what do I do? I’m not exactly great at having my shit together.”

“You’ll figure it out too. You and Cas,” Sam turns to Dean, expecting him to change the subject, deny, evade, the usual. “Or are we just not going to talk about you and Cas?”

Dean turns his face up to the ceiling, leaning in against the open trunk. “We can talk about me and Cas. But I think you know everything.”

“Yeah, I do,” Sam says. 

“I don’t know how to do this, Sam,” Dean pulls his knees up to his face and closes his eyes. “I don’t know how to be with someone who gave up everything for me. I’m not worth that. How do I do this? How do I do this, without fucking everything up?”

“He wanted this,” Sam runs the blade of a knife along the ground, scratching zig-zag lines into the cement. “Because he’d rather be with you than be in Heaven. Because if there’s anyone who can help someone be…human…it’s you, because you’re the best one that any of us know.”

Dean lifts his head, “Whatever.”

“Remember once, when we were little, Dad left us in some disgusting motel room while he went on a hunt. I was sick, and you made me canned Chicken and Stars soup and I laid there, trying to sleep, and I couldn’t because the people in the room next to us were fucking so loud, against the wall, and you told me they were fighting,” Sam shakes his head, laughs. “And you told me stories, to distract me. You told me angels were watching over us and that everything was going to be okay, someday.”

Dean nods. “Yeah, I remember that. I told you that because Mom used to tell me that. And I never believed her.”

“I guess, though, you were right,” Sam throws the knife into a stack of discarded weapons. “At least, for you. Me…look at how quickly I let Chuck take over me. I was weak, I couldn’t fight it, and I’m sorry I never told you about what was happening to me.”

“It’s over now, and it doesn’t matter,” Dean says. 

“Did you ever think it could end like this?” Sam looks around, at the contents of the Impala, everywhere. All these things, they would maybe never need again, because they’d won, because God is dead and because Amara had saved Dean, saved Dean from the life he never really wanted. 

“No, I never thought I’d survive this. And, honestly, I thought—if I did survive—something else would get me eventually. My bet was always on a vamp,” Dean stands up from the floor, leaning against the car.

“Like Dean Winchester would ever be taken out by a vamp,” Sam looks at his phone. Eileen is waiting outside for him, and he knows this is it—and that Dean is right, that he isn’t coming back. “I need to go…you know, just call, text me if you need me.”

“I know.” Dean stares down into the empty trunk, at the broken devil’s trap, at the end of everything he’s ever known, and he slams it shut. It’s over, all over.


	17. Deus in Absentia (Dean/Castiel)

Castiel’s tongue forces Dean’s lips apart. “Tell me what you want.”

“Anything,” Dean says, into Castiel’s open mouth. Underneath Castiel, Dean needs this, needs this to forget about killing God, needs this to forget about the world, a world where he’s useless. A world he doesn’t know his place in, now that the monsters are gone. A world where there’s no one to save, no one to kill, where there’s only Castiel. Castiel, between his legs, Castiel buried in his neck.

There’s only Castiel, and Dean has never needed, wanted, anyone, ever, as much as he needs Castiel, right now. 

Last night, they had saved the Earth. Last night, they had ended God. But tonight, all Dean wants, is Castiel, over and over, until it hurts, until something makes sense again. 

He pushes Castiel back, just enough to slip away from him, and stands up, off the floor. The television is still on, and it casts a bluish light across Castiel’s face as he kneels in front of Dean. 

The volume is so low, it’s barely a whisper over the sound of Dean breathing. All that’s on now is the news, a million reports from a million different so-called experts, on the day that everyone had been taken away and the day that everyone had been brought back, a million theories and no explanations. Some people say they were scared, some assumed they were dead, some say wish they could go back, back to nothing.

Not a single one says, maybe it was an act of God, maybe this was all God’s fault. Because people want to believe in God when they walk away from a 20-car pile-up on the highway, or when the surgery is a success. But they don’t want to believe God would rip them away from the Earth, their families, their lives. And no one wants to believe the world is safe because God is dead. 

Dean pulls Castiel up by his arm and shoves him down onto the worn plaid-print chair, knocking over the empty beer bottle that’s sitting on the table next to it. Castiel slides his fingers underneath Dean’s shirt, underneath the waist of Dean’s jeans. Dean wraps his fingers around Castiel’s wrists, moves Castiel’s hands off his body. 

Castiel looks down, away from Dean, but Dean forces his chin back up, and he bends, smashes Castiel’s mouth into his own. Standing in front of Castiel, Dean takes off his clothes, throws them down by Castiel’s feet, and, with the glow of the television dripping down his naked skin, he puts his head into his hands, tells Castiel to touch him, in any way, anywhere, he wants.

This, this is what Castiel had imagined, behind the locked doors of motel room bathrooms while Dean slept just a few feet away. This, this is what Castiel wanted every single fucking time he was too close to Dean. This, this is what Castiel had given up his grace, fallen from Heaven, for. This, this is the reason he had ached to be condemned by God.

Castiel leans forward, his hands around Dean’s lower back, pulling him between his knees. He presses his face into Dean’s hips, moving his tongue along where Dean’s thighs meet his pelvis. His forehead against Dean’s stomach, he stops, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, because he can tell how much Dean needs this, because he can still feel Dean’s mouth, the way Dean swallowed him down last night, and he’s afraid he’ll fail at this, like he failed at being an angel, like he’s failed at everything.

“Fuck,” Castiel mumbles, and his lips brush across the tip of where Dean’s body is waiting for him.

“Cas,” Dean pulls at Castiel’s hair, his hand falling down the side of Castiel’s cheek. He opens Castiel’s mouth with his fingers, slips himself in between Castiel’s teeth. 

Dean can feel Castiel’s lips, his tongue, all over him. Castiel, fallen Angel of the Lord who had dragged him out of Hell and put him back together. Castiel, who led armies in Heaven. Castiel, who sacrificed himself to the Empty. Castiel, human, forever, because of him. Close to reaching the end, Dean steps back, letting himself fall away from Castiel. “Stop. Sorry. I don’t want to…I don’t want this to be over, yet.”

“What should I do?” Castiel stands almost against Dean, close enough for Dean to feel how much Castiel wants this, too. 

The faded black t-shirt and jeans ripped along the left knee that Castiel is wearing, are borrowed from Dean. “Take them off,” Dean says, pulling at Castiel’s clothes, his lips touching Castiel’s as he speaks. 

Dean steps back, watches Castiel as he complies. Castiel presses his body against Dean’s, until every part of him is touching every part of Dean. He runs his fingers up the side of Dean’s stomach, up to his ribs, up his chest, and into Dean’s mouth, holding Dean’s lips apart as he kisses him. 

Dean doesn’t know if Castiel will still want him, like this, when he finally realizes that he’s nothing now, no one. Lost in a world where his perfect ending left him worthless. 

Maybe, eventually, Castiel will regret giving up everything for him. 

“I’m going to screw this up,” Dean’s mouth breaks away from Castiel’s.

“So am I,” Castiel’s lips find Dean’s again, and he exhales slowly into Dean. 

“I know,” Dean kisses Castiel’s neck, moving up to his jaw. 

Dean’s body is still wet with Castiel’s saliva, and he pulls Castiel back down onto the floor. Castiel sits, in the middle of Dean’s legs, moves his fingers down Dean’s chest and over his stomach, between and through his legs. Dean groans, his body squirms under Castiel’s hands, squirms from the feeling of Castiel’s fingertips pressing up against his insides. 

Castiel stretches forward, up to Dean’s face, and Dean wraps his legs around him. He tilts his body up against Castiel, puts his arms over his own head. “Just fucking do it, Cas.” 

Castiel covers Dean’s mouth with his own as he shoves himself forward, pushing Dean’s knees up to position himself within him. Dean’s body collapses against Castiel’s and Dean moans, in pain, then in shock at the feeling of having Castiel, inside him, part of him. 

Dean reaches down, to just above where his body is joined with Castiel’s, and he wraps his hand around himself, moving his wrist in rhythm with Castiel grinding against him.

He wants to hate himself, for lying here, legs spread in the air, jerking himself off while Castiel pushes further up inside him, but, instead, Dean can never remember, ever, anything that felt better than this. 

Castiel groans into the air, watching Dean, watching the way Dean moves against him, watching every inch of Dean’s body. And Dean lets himself go, all over his own stomach, and runs his hands over the wet skin and hair between his legs. Castiel takes Dean’s wrist, brings Dean’s fingers up to his mouth. The way Dean tastes, salty and warm, all over the inside of his lips, is enough to finally drive Castiel over the edge. 

He falls forward onto Dean, onto Dean’s chest. The feeling of Castiel, releasing himself, is overwhelming. “Cas, God...fuck,” Dean muffles his words in Castiel’s hair. 

“God is dead,” Castiel pulls his face up to Dean’s, lets his lips linger on his. “God is dead, and you’re finally mine.” 


	18. Ramble On (Sam/Dean/Castiel/Eileen/Jack)

“This is really what you want to do, you and Dean?” Eileen shifts into park, the headlights of the Plymouth Valiant shining onto the crossroads in the fading sunlight.

Sam turns to her, resting his elbow on the car door. “Yeah. Dean and I, we need, I don’t know, some kind of closure. And this, this will be the end of everything that has tied us to this life. The end of…the road, the end of our roadmap, I guess.”'

“Okay,” Eileen leans back against the seat and runs her fingers along the steering wheel. “I think I get it.”

“I don’t need anything to help me remember this life, or everyone around me who has died because of me,” Sam says. “And I just want to move on, and so does Dean.”

“So do I,” Eileen looks up at the pink and yellow clouds that streak through the sky above them. “I don’t want to remember the things I’ve seen, dying, or Hell. I don’t want to remember any of it. So, whatever you need.”

“This is more important to Dean than it is to me,” Sam presses his head into the window. “I got away, once, from this. I think that I know how to live without hunting. Without monsters. But Dean, Dean never knew anything else. And he wants to do this, so I’m doing it.”

Eileen nods. “Dean will be okay. So will you. So will I. Someday.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Sam puts his hand on hers. 

“I think, so will we,” Eileen turns off the ignition.

Dean presses the brakes of the Impala, letting it roll along the broken gravel so that it’s directly facing Eileen’s car, their lights crossing in the intersection. It had to be here, Dean decided, somewhere in between Lebanon and Lawrence, in the center of a long-abandoned cemetery, at the crossroads of two streets that both seem to lead to nowhere. 

He stares across the field, at the graves that have fallen over onto their sides, at the way the last rays of the sun glimmer off the tombstones and the trees. And then he stares into the box Castiel holds on his lap, the last contents of the Impala, the last thing that Dean needs to destroy, to finally be free.

There were some things, the toy soldiers that Sam had crammed into the ash tray, the Legos that Dean had shoved into the air conditioner vents, that were a part of the car now, its soul, its engine. Those things, they’ll be a part of this car until it’s nothing but impounded steel, someday. But this, this, Dean had kept shoved in the glove compartment for the past few months, and he wants it gone. Because it would always be there, reminding him, of everything he was always told he had to be, of everything he was always told he had to do.

The first stars are fighting to shine against the setting sun, and Castiel looks over at Dean, “This feels like a funeral.”

“I think, because it is,” Dean takes the box from him, glancing back at Jack, snoring in the backseat.

Castiel reaches into the pocket of his trench coat. It’s tattered and stained from the Empty and, maybe, he decides, this is the last time he’ll wear it. He pulls the cassette out, the writing is worn, but the title “Dean’s Top 13 Zepp TRA XX” is still legible. He shoves it into the Impala’s tape deck, turns the volume up.

“You still have that? You had it with you the whole time?” Dean asks. 

“It was a gift from you, so yes,” Castiel says. “So I kept it with me. I loved you for a long time, Dean.” He turns away, but Dean pulls his face against his, and kisses him. “I’m sorry, sorry for everything, Cas. Sorry for treating you like shit, sorry for blaming you, sorry that I let you go, so many times.”

Sam bangs on the window of the Impala. “Are you coming or what?” Jack jumps awake, rubs his eyes. 

Castiel climbs out of the car, and Eileen wraps her arms around him, and then Dean. “I’m so happy,” she says. “For you, for both of you.”

“I’m so happy you’re okay,” Dean hugs her again. “I don’t know what Sam would have done…”

“Well, I’m here,” she says. “We all are, and I think, that’s all that matters, right?”

Jack combs through the grass, collecting sticks and branches from the ground. He reads the tombstones as he passes them, wondering, who each grave’s inhabitant was, how they died, if they’re in Heaven. He wonders, if Heaven will be different, with Amara in charge. He wonders, if somewhere, his mother knows, that the world is safe now, and that she doesn’t have to worry about him anymore. He wonders, if she’s still proud of him, even though, he isn’t special, he’s only human.

He arranges a pile of dead leaves and broken tree limbs in a circle, in the middle of the crossroads. He hums along with the first notes of “Stairway to Heaven” as Castiel hands him the box of matches. Jack swipes the match along the side of the box and holds the flame up in front of his face, before letting the fire fall to the ground, igniting the pyre. 

“Do we really need the soundtrack?” Sam leans against the front of the Impala.

“Yeah, I want it,” Dean says, standing at the edge of the fire. The way Jack positioned the branches, pointing up towards Heaven, it reminds him of every hunter’s funeral, everyone they’ve lost. It reminds him of everything he wants to forget now, everything he needs to let go.

“Should we, I don’t know, say something while we do this?” Castiel throws another match onto the ground, as the flames stray in the wind. “It seems like we should say something, maybe.”

Sam steps forward, next to Dean, “You should start. This was your idea first.”

“Okay,” Dean exhales, his breath visible in the air in front of him. “I suck at this. But, ever since I was four years-old, and I carried you out of that house, Sammy, all I’ve ever known was this life. This life, where you’ve covered in blood, until someday, you’re dead in your own. And all I’ve ever been told was that I was good at it, that I’m nothing but a killer.” He pauses and looks over at Castiel and closes his eyes. “But that’s not me. And it never was. And even now, now that it’s all over, all this does is remind me of what I was told I had to be. Not anymore.” 

He holds the journal, John Winchester’s Journal, over the fire. His father’s directions, to him, to Sam, to pick up where he left off, the family business. 

He rips out the pages, the Woman in White, the Wendigo, the exorcisms, and drops them into the flames, then he hands the book to Sam.

Sam flips through it cover to cover, and then lets more pages fall down into the fire. “This is for everyone we lost. It’s for Jess, for Jo, for Ellen, for Ash, for Bela, for everyone we couldn’t save. For Kevin, for Crowley, for everyone who’s dead, gone, because they knew us. This is for everyone we lost here, Charlie, Bobby, that we met again in another world. This is for Mom.”

Castiel holds the journal between his fingers and tears out pages covered in symbols and phone numbers, “This is for Heaven, and all the angels who were lost in every fall, in every apocalypse.” He passes it to Eileen.

“This is for my parents,” she says, handing the book to Jack.

“This is for my Mom,” Jack throws a handful of papers down onto the blaze, then he places the journal back in Dean’s hands. “You do the rest.”

Dean opens the journal, looks through the few remaining pages, at his father’s ramblings, and he throws it down into the pyre, watches as the flames engulf it. “And it’s for all of you, our real family.”

Dean watches the journal burn, until its blackened ash, until it’s nothing. Everything he’s ever known, it’s all gone, finally. Finally, he’s free. Free from monsters, free from demons, free from God. 

Eileen pours the contents of a water bottle over the fire, until the last of the embers burn out. 

“It’s over,” Sam kicks aside the black cinders and burned-out cardboard. 

“Yeah,” Dean says. “We’re done. We saved the world, for good. We won. I don’t know, what we do now. But we won.”

“We’ll be okay,” Sam opens the door to Eileen’s car. “We all will.” 

“Yeah, maybe,” Dean walks to the Impala, standing outside the driver’s side door, running his fingers along the handle to the door. He looks back, at the charred corpse of the life he’s known, the life he thought was his fate.

“Dean, are you okay?” Castiel asks, the door creaking as he starts to sit down in the car.

“No, but eventually I will be,” Dean walks to passenger side of the Impala, to Castiel. He throws the keys into Castiel’s lap. “I think it’s your turn to drive.”


End file.
